RP [Strays] The Higaflan Mutant Crisis

[iaincarter]

Freehold - The Great Cerg
Tunnels - Tunnels

For a moment, Huthang was torn between smacking his face in disbelief, or the slightly more laborious option of getting out of his cockpit, crossing over to Joe's Crookback to drag it's pilot out for a well-deserved punch in the face. The latter was a lot more effort, but Huthang held out the vain hope that it might actually knock a few more of Joe's brain cells loose from whatever prison they were locked within. The mutant was so disillusioned with his current superior Stray that he had become increasingly sure that brain damage couldn't actually worsen Joe's personality or abilities in any way.

At any rate, such wishful thinking would have to wait. The emerging enemy mech was of much greater and immediate concern, even if it's initial movements implied that the pilot wasn't experienced with utilising his machine. Huthang had known battle-maniacs in the past who learned swiftest under the pressure of battle and he had no desire to make a blind wager that this opponent was not such a person. That meant there was exactly no time for Joe's particular brand of prevarication that might be considered cowardice under a certain light.

Deciding that he would have to take action, Huthang activated the lance's comm channel. "Titania, co-ordinate with the other faeries. Get our mirage nanites in the air. I want a one-way illusion projected two metres in front of us that shows the tunnel ahead as being empty for anyone looking at us from the barge's side." Sure, there was only twenty metres of tunnel around the corner, but the longer they could keep the enemy from noticing them, the better. "Once you're ready, kick on the jump jets and we'll glide around the corner a metre above the ground."

Huthang began slowly moving his Sun Scorpion forwards, positioning his machine best for the following swing around the bend in the tunnel once the faeries were ready. He also began preparing the glassmaker to fire, hoping the jury-rigged repairs would at least allow him a good shot or two before giving out. "I'm hitting him with my glassmaker. If you have any radioactive weaponry, use it. If we don't kill it outright, maybe we can fake the pilot into thinking he has a radiation leak and make him bail."

"Mirage is up, Huthang, bringing jump jets online." Nodding towards his faerie's display, Huthang acknowledged Titania with a nod towards the faerie's holoprojection. With a little shakiness that smoothed out after naught but a moment, the Sun Scorpion slowly rose off of the floor of the tunnel. With a light hand on the controls Huthang moved the mech forwards, applying greater yaw to the rear of the Scorpion as he did, causing it to smoothly drift around the corner. As soon as the turn was complete, he pulled his foot from the pedal controlling the jump jets, causing Titania to lower the Scorpion back onto its legs.

"Fire in the hole!" Carefully placing the targeting reticule over the centre of the squid-like mech, using the red pattern of lights as a crosshair, Huthang triggered the glassmaker to fire. The background hum of his mech feverishly increased in pitch before there was a loud crack of superheated and displaced air that Huthang could feel through the seat of his cockpit as much as he heard it. A bright golden beam of energy, the size of a tree trunk, shot forth from the Scorpion - five seconds of actinic glory that lanced towards the enemy.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Front of the Barge

Yamog wasted a lot of time getting it together, there was no sugar coating it- For a moment they contemplated having Deimos project some more convenient monitor readouts as holographic panels directly in front of her face, but the bleeding, ruined, faceplate staring at her mere inches away was more than just horrifying and undignified, it was a liability- Cyborgs like these could recover from the most ridiculous wounds, sometimes- She watched a whole internep video about it!- Sometimes they didn't even have real brains in their heads, just a remote chip puppeteering the body from somewhere else...

Joanna's mech thus left them behind after valiantly taking that shot for the spider girl, and Yamog was forced to waste even more time trying to angle the armor away from the line of fire, opening the canopy again, having Deimos temporarily take control of the lasers again, firing along the floor to dissuade further borders- and then kicking upwards like crazy, whilst trying not to expose their body directly to the lead-raining void-

Light and shadow flickered in a dizzying display of dust, whizzing tracers, angry hud alarms, and blind carnage-

The body was dislodged- Her headrest exploded- Another shot hit the curved underside of her canopy, and reflected down, directly puncturing her suit with a sickeningly audible pop-

Was she hit? Somewhere just below her left upper armpit? She couldn't feel anything? Was that adrenaline blunting the pain?

Hatch closed. Hatch closed. Close the fucking hatch again-

This wasn't logical, human thinking anymore- Her screaming animal instincts drove her to just move- drag herself out of this, fire freaking everything, as soon as possible-

In effect, they surged ahead at an angle, crossing paths underneath Joanna's metal frame as they boosted backwards through the void, overhead- A continuous staccato chain fire of macro-missiles, spraying out of their hexagonal left side pods- A cognition somewhere between the spider girl and her fairy, the shots went from exploding uselessly in the dirt, to hitting the lower skirts of armour, to panging in and around the assembly of that gigantic glowing barrel-

This wasn't aiming, this was being so overwhelmingly furious that the enemy wouldn't be allowed to focus either-

Was it enough to divert the impending blast away from her comrade?

Would the Proboscis' ammo last long enough to get lucky, or would she be left empty handed in the open, when this thing finally fired?

 

[Commissar Farzi]

Luk didn't even hesitate-with a roar that shook the cavern he slammed into the techies; grabbing the biggest, and heaviest object-that being the crew served weapon they'd been so helpful to provide so large a blunt instrument; he swung it in one hand as grabbed a man by the throat and squeezed even as he hurled him into this fellows. Wayfinder could only imagine the sheer panic the big mutie was causing as he plunged into their ranks.

She heard the wet splat of a melon busting-chances were he'd likely just crushed someone's skull.

 

[Charmaylarg Dufrain]

Tunnels

Like a weighted balloon the heavy squid mech pulled itself from it's bay with a wrenching of metal frames as it turned a rectangular bay door into an ovaloid bowed shape before it sank briefly as it's anti-grav unit adjusted to the change in depth causing it to bob slightly like a buoy on a chain in the waves before it steadied. The mech was clearly slow. That much was evident as it's every move required it to adjust with a series of retro thrusters to turn and maneuver while a massive central grav-chute in a protective duct acted as primary thrust and kept the octoid-mecha aloft while under it eight long serpentine mechadendrites ending in hose-nozzle like apatures that glowed in thermal with the heat of contained energy flicked and flopped around without purpose.

At least until it was attacked. Huthangs sun-scorpion dug all it's six legs into the deck and minutely adjusted thanks to his fairy to compensate for the incoming recoil as there was a brief glow from the tip of the scorpions tail as it came up off the ground and loomed over the mecha before the Gyros locked into place and like a mirror catching the sun in someones eyes in passing glimmered before the mech rattled and shook with the vibration of the weapon as a tree-trunk thick beam of golden light passed instantaneously from the tail-mounted weapon to the surface of the enemy mecha and pulled up and back against the recoil as the Gyros fought to keep the weapon straight.

Huthang couldn't see the result. In the dark and so close to his target the tunnel was briefly turned to day and then even brighter as light was reflected against the mirage nanites. But if he could see it what he would have bore witness was the Glassmaker striking an instantaneous red-orange gash on the surface of the mecha as it superheated durrandium plates but then traveled up across the mecha as the force of the beam pushed the mecha around and away like a balloon on the wind as it jerked away from his laser and collided with the barge and then away again as Huthangs beam then passed into the open vehicle bay and then continued up into the softer and less armored interior where the recoil continued to pull upwards as it cut into the ceiling and then up several decks and out the top of the barge before it cut a gut in the ceiling of the tunnel and the tail whipped back behind his mecha as the Gyros whined.


Blinking away sunspots Huthang at first may have thought he destroyed the Mecha outright due to seeing only a mess of red-orange glowing metal where it had once been. But then, from the darkness, four red lights rose from where the only slightly damaged mecha had been pushed as four of it's tentacles on the front pointing towards Huthangs side, and four behind it rose.

And like eight smaller versions of Huthangs Glass Maker, the tunnel erupted into a disco of whipping lasers flailing all about like out of control fire hoses of red energy.

Luk had just crushed another sack of meat with his heavy pummeling stick (a heavy burst laser) when the deck beneath him got suddenly hot enough to feel even through his boots and suit. He was able to look down long enough to see the deck glow orange and buckle slightly off to his side before the pillar of golden light ripped up the deck several feet next to him as thick as his torso and close enough that he went momentarily blind and stumbled back; Saving his life in the process as he fell backwards over the railing, only managing to catch himself with a single hand on the railing as he dangled. Blinking away the red spots in his eyes he was able to look over to his side and make a double-take as suddenly he found himself face-to-plate with the side of a massive floating sphere of metal and tentacles that rose started lancing in every single direction including the side of its own mother-barge!

A barge which very pointedly seemed to now be on fire bellow Luk and climbing where the stubby barrel of a plasma gun now hung lame and impotently as the last of Joannas and Yamogs salvo collided with the side of the barge; Effectively silencing the last of it's resistance even as a stray macromissile from Yamog struck into an errant breach and exploded inside.

They saw it too. There was a sudden and short lived flash of intensely bright golden light on the other side of the barge before the massive heavy-mecha was pushed onto the side of the barge with it's back to them. It mattered little as from one trial to another after defeating the Tech-Scums ambush and their barge the mega-mecha hovered ominously off the ground and without needing to even look at them rose half of it's eight tentacles behind it in their direction and erupted small but continuous beams of ruby-red light that lanced about and trailed momentarily up their mechs frames causing minor damage as they continued to dodge but whipped about erratically with a seeming complexity to control or keep on target as the red lasers trailed after them, over Luks mech, and chased after the two mobile mecha only to overcorrect and glance beams of energy over their armor that while not overtly as harmful as a larger weapon burned away anti-beam coatings on their armored exterior and left deep grooves in their armor like shoddy welds that begged only a moment longer that could if hitting any location for longer than a second or two could potentially melt through their armor as the four tentacles on their side and something it was firing at with four others on it's other side whipped about all the same as the squid-mecha bobbed up and down in place content to idle on it's grave chute and retro-thrusters to stay aloft like a floating fortress...

 

[Charaa]

Tunnels

Where Vega wanted to exercise caution and attempt communication with the strange creature, her new teammates had other ideas. The situation quickly escalated, and it became clear that diplomacy wasn’t on the table. She had barely begun considering how to engage with the peculiar squid-mech when Bell, her Fairy AI companion, chimed in with a swift warning, alerting her to the plan the others had devised with Huthang.

“Vega, our mirage nanites have been set up to create a one-way illusion projected two meters in front of us,” Bell explained calmly, “showing the tunnel ahead as empty for anyone observing us from the barge’s side.”

Vega's eyes darted to her sensors, already visualizing how the illusion would distort their position, creating a false impression of an unoccupied tunnel. The nanites were working in concert to deceive any potential threats, masking their approach. It was a clever trick, but Vega barely had time to appreciate the strategy before another part of the plan came through—this time from Huthang. He had made his intentions clear: he was going to deploy his Glassmaker weapon. And worse yet, if anyone had radioactive weaponry, they were encouraged to use it.

Vega sighed, feeling her hopes for a peaceful resolution quickly slipping away. “Couldn’t even get a chance to talk,” she muttered under her breath. It wasn’t that she disagreed with the urgency of the situation, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the strange creature than her teammates were willing to consider. Yet, there was no time to argue.
Her fingers moved over the controls, activating her Hyper Laser system. The power hum of the weapon charging filled her cockpit as her focus shifted to the task at hand. Bell, always one step ahead, initiated the jump jets on her Mech, propelling Vega backwards into a more strategic position. The sudden burst of motion sent her Mech soaring through the air, and as it landed smoothly in its new vantage point, Vega’s eyes narrowed, locking onto the target.

The Hyper Laser fired, its piercing beam cutting through the tunnel's murky atmosphere with deadly precision. Vega had hoped for a chance to communicate, to understand what or who they were dealing with, but the moment for diplomacy had passed. Now it was all about survival and outmaneuvering whatever threat lurked in the tunnel.
Vega groaned in pain as the tunnel became very bright for her eyes, due to both of their attacks.