RP: 4th Fleet (NSN) [Training Mission 1.0] Welcome to Boot Camp. Again.

Despite the reply, Leon knew he was being ignored. No changes were made to her equipment as his watch ticked away. When it, and the control panel's timer, reached zero, the simulation began.

All of the pneumatic workings in the simulators hissed and groaned as they activated. Then, as though finished yawning, the machines were silent. On the Marines' HUDs, they saw everything would expect to see in a Hostile or an Aggressor. Except jungle. Or rather jungle and swamp.

Dense undergrowth, tall trees, and soft, moist dirt. The simulated sinking feeling of tons of armored Nepleslian felt very real. Leon regretted that the obviously oppressive heat and humidity could not be replicated in the simulators. The Marines found it difficult even seeing what was ahead of them as their field of vision was hampered by low branches, high leafy undergrowth and constant greenery.

"Welcome to Planet Delkennehana, or the Planet Q Simulated Training Mission, whichever you prefer. As you can see, it is dense jungle with some marshy, swampy bits farther along if you so choose to go that way. The mission objective is rather simple - search and destroy. IPG reports an NMX mecha along with a small number of power armor and unknown numbers of light infantry. Only one major problem, the Star Army has apparently decided not to play nice and also wants to take this world from the squids. If you encounter SAOY units, be careful. I'm not sure what their orders are. Remember, both sides use Daisy units for planetary operations. Additional Nepleslian units have been deployed to your area as well. There are other objectives to accomplish after this one."

Leon motioned silently to Corporal Holmes to begin prepping his men for the simulators. "Let's go, Watson. This will be interesting."

Then the Chief wrapped up his briefing, "Last approximate position was here," a blinking red dot appeared on the HUD mini-map. "Happy hunting."

"Alright Cavaliers, stay on your toes; there is no "rear" in jungle fighting. Dense terrain favors a Ripper's combat abilities. Also, as the Chief said, the Yammies use Daisy PAs as well the NMX. So do not simply start shooting at the first thing that moves. Assess the situation and identify your target."

Phaedra started forward, her eyes constantly scanning her surroundings.

"Simmons, Tybalt, Mayhew, Stones, and Wreno, you are all with me."

"Morris, I am designating you as squad leader. Romero, Aubery, Greer, and Karrelik, go with Morris. Head about 60 meters to the west of us."

"I want everyone to spread out; do not cluster up. Remain in visual contact at all times. Move out," she said, pushing cautiously through the brush towards the objective marked on the map.

Lisa was suddenly knee deep in shit. Literally. She quickly made for neares tree to get some cover and balance. Being an agressor in swamp sucked. She was clanky, cumbersome and it was hard to move around.

"Ahhh shit, I cannot move." She said, while she figured how to control her movement. She listened to orders and what not. "Ma'am you want me in the middle?" She asked then, readying her AMP. AOP in forest like this did not seem like goot idea.

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Alex fell into the swamp and first thing she did was halting her movement. She scanned the area for enemy and allies alike trying to figure out what was going on. She smirked seein how foxy Chief was giving them training assignment such as this. Even she who experienced few battles on her own never been in such place.

"Roger that," she confirmed Phaedra's orders, prepared her HPAR and got ready to move out.

"Hmmph stuck in the mud again, oh well may as well make use of the extra stuff they strapped to these aggressor suits" Sawyer muttered as he activated his suit's CGD-01a and his AG units lifted him out of the muck of the swamp. "Roger that Sarn't watch for yammies and don't shoot them, check for IFF signals first" he commed to phaedra.

Bastilen made sure to lift his knees high as he stepped, making sure not to keep his feet pressed into the dirt for too long. The simulated environments were not unfamiliar to him. Even with remote locking mechanisms, the IPG didn't trust him with an actual armor. Still, even if this armor was a different kind of car, it was a car none-the-less, and you never forgot how to drive. Simulated or not, he was at home when nestled into a powered armor, especially with something as advanced as the M-Series.

The P4C took the left side of the squad, spacing himself as ordered, but minding the distance between himself and the other marines. He kept his sensors in passive levels and kept power outputs to a minimum. If they were intending to stealthy in any way, he was going to ensure to not be the one spotted.

"Roger that," Henry replied as he turned his attention to his Monoeyes. One of the other problems of working within a jungle aside from the treacherous footing was tuning your Monoeye to work with the ambient heat masking the heavy, oppressive heat of the jungle. Having been to Kennewes without Monoeyes once before, he had figured out that making them detect metal rather than heat was a better alternative, "Set your monoeyes to detect metal rather than heat passively. Do not activate them fully - the subspace particles will give away our positions immediately."

Henry was moving very deliberately through the underbrush and muck, keeping his HPAR raised westwards and ready to fire. He would glance to those behind him and keep in constant visual contact. The 360 degrees of vision offered by the Monoeyes enabled him to do so at the expense of some of his attention - but he'd learned to expand and divide his attention equally as he grew more and more familiar with the Nepleslian suit's unique visual sensors.

Karrelik followed all standing orders by following Morris and pointing his gun in the right direction. No need to exercise any kind of skill yet, he reminded himself as he switched the setting on his mono-eye. As the display flickered slightly, he thought he caught a glimpse of something...

But nah, they wouldn't drop us next to the enemy. Probably one of our own, or nothing.

He quietly – well, he was in a power suit, so as quietly as he could - stepped through the mud and kept his gun pointed to the west because that was what everyone else was doing.

So far, the orders were simple enough - walk through the jungle, watch what you shoot, but terminate Squids with extreme prejudice. Samuel adjusted his sensors according to Morris' specs; after all, it couldn't hurt, could it? He loaded up his shotgun and pulled out his vibroknife, cautiously slashing through the brush in front of him.

Things were quiet, the only motion he had picked up so far was his squadmates, spreading out and pulling out of the mud. Hopefully that wouldn't be a constant thing for the whole mission, because they'd be sitting ducks once the Daisies showed up. Wouldn't that be fun.

He found himself constantly checking his back - branches brushed up against his armor with every motion and dislodged dewdrops rolled down his monoeye, distracting him from their forward push. At least when you fought in the alleys of Funky City, the buildings weren't falling on you as you walked.

"Yes, Sergeant," Laura acknowledged, all business. Her childish attitude had evaporated, as it always did, when it came to her duties as a Marine. The sinking mud made movement difficult. "Corporal Morris, is there a way to have the armor shift its weight away from the legs? Put the stress somewhere else?" Laura asked Henry. She was unsure of the mechanics but had heard rumors that it could be done.

Nevertheless, she moved slowly into a loose formation, AOP slung back and shotgun at the ready. Close quarters meant that it was a better weapon. The shells from an AOP could very well hurt the Marines as much as the squids.

She had programmed each of the two barrels of her AS4GS to have a different ammunition type. 7 shells of solid tungsten carbide and 7 shells containing excited tungsten carbide plasma. God have mercy on whoever was on the receiving end because Laura didn't understand the concept of being merciful.

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Bernhard Greer switched on his MonoEye suite and started picking up the squad immediately. The one problem he saw was that there was that for those whom he had an IFF signal, he could identify. Everything else that was metallic was an unknown.

The blinking dot on his mini-map indicated a position to the northeast, towards some marshes and away from the wooded area. But on the metal detection mode, his MonoEye and all others on that setting were showing two groups of unknowns.

"Corporal Morris, Sergeant Volkov, I have two groups of unknowns. Contact One is to our northeast... by four kilometers, approximately six to eight individual bounces... hard to tell. Contact Two, south by two kilometers. Maybe ten contacts. Can anyone confirm? My readings are patchy - moisture is probably interfering," Bernhard reported.

Karrelik slowly swept his eye in the general direction of the targets. Then he saw them. Of course, I saw a glimpse of something earlier. They must have just been moving into range, or out from behind something.

The image flickered and shivered as he looked at it, but he never saw more than eight to each group. He doubted it mattered, though. If they were all power armors they had his squad outnumbered.

"Also getting two groups of hosti–" he cut himself off, "Contacts, but I'm only getting eight apiece," he reported to the whole group. "Do we do something drastic about them, or wait?"

"Fuck! Tits! Shit! Balls!" Were the only words that Ran really knew at the moment. He'd overslept, despite repeated kicks from his bunk mate regarding the fact that his outfit was getting ready to train today. Already, he was sprinting through the hallways, choking on a cigarette that at this point was obligatorily being smoked by him.

Bowling over several Marines inside of the Simulation Room, Ran hurriedly made his way to Chief Leon Santiago, made sure that his attire was appropriate, and saluted him.

"Sir, Mid Corporal Rui reportin' a bit late!" Ran almost saw the words leave his mouth, and would have given anything to wish them back. "..I mean...Mid Corporal Rui reporting as ordered...a little la-Fuck it. I'm late, sir." At this point, Ran's demeanor became a lot less formal.

"Any way I can get in on this simulation?"

Leon covered the mic as he looked at the Mid-Corporal. "Wait for a minute, I want you to watch them for a while and tell me what you think. Then I'll send you in with Sergeant Rochester's squad," he said to Ran.

That reminded Leon, "Kerr, get your squadron into their machines." The newest NCO, younger than all the other squad leaders, grinned mischievously. "Overwhelming firepower on its way," Kerr declared enthusiastically.

"Cavaliers, my suggestion - activate your Snakeskin systems," Leon said to the Marines.

"So, what can you tell me about Sergeant Volkov and her leadership style, Mid-Corporal Rui? I know you used to be her superior officer," Leon asked Ran.

"Acknowledged Bernhard," said Phaedra, picking up the same readings as he did from her passive monoeye.

"Do we do something drastic about them, or wait?" said Karrelik.

"Negative. Drastic actions are the last thing we need. Caution is paramount. Head towards Contact One. But keep an eye out for movement from Contact Two; we do not want to get hit from behind.

"Cavaliers, my suggestion - activate your Snakeskin systems," Leon said to the Marines.

"You heard the Chief; activate Snakeskins now! Stay alert for movement," she said, activating her camouflage and carefully advancing towards the northeast.

Both Bernhard and Laura activated their camouflage systems and kept an eye on their passive MonoEye sensors. However, they both stayed in place, waiting for Corporal Morris to tell them who to take point.

John didn't immediately know what to do, then he remembered. He shimmered out of sight as his Snakeskin system activated, then stayed absolutely still and enjoyed the feeling of invisibility, looking all the time in the general direction of the contacts.

Suddenly, on Corporal Morris' sensors, a third group appeared. Its size appeared smaller but each individual unit appeared larger than a power armor suit. "4th Fleet Lancers, Corporal Kerr, reporting. Sergeant Volkov, I'm told your squad is nearby. The real cavalry has arrived!"

"Hrm," Henry mumbled before he looked over to the newcomer group, and then opened a private channel to Phaedra, "Take a look at our Southern contact, will you?"
"Kerr, keep your head down," Henry was quick to send a line to the overzealous newcomer, "We have unconfirmed contacts, northeast, four klicks."

With that in mind, Henry made a hand signal to the other marines in his tow to activate their Snakeskin systems. Henry eventually blended into the background vegetation, "You heard the man, skin up. Romero, just think about lifting one leg at a time, don't think too hard, though."

He then flicked through the other spectrums and detection ranges that the Monoeye suite would have. Infrared, Ultraviolet, Electricity, Aether, Dark Matter, Subspace Particles, RADAR, LADAR - the list was exhaustive and the minute adjustments to sort the noise from the true readings required some effort, but Henry had to be thorough to confirm the findings.

"Greer, take point heading North. Romero, follow him, we'll move in a overlapping cover," Overlapping Cover was a classic tactic, where a group of four to six would have half of their troops move forward and take point, while the other half covers them - the covering troops then move past the pointmen to take point while the previous pointmen cover them and follow them. This was a simple movement pattern, excellent for dealing with threats from one side in particular.

With that in mind, Greer and Romero were on point with Aubrey and Karrelik providing them with cover and support. Henry was moving between the groups as an extra set of ears. If the shit hit the fan and they ended up getting flanked, the group could contract and form a circle.

Samuel watched the contacts light up his screen, letting his implant predict where they were going, eventually coming up with a heat map overlay from the probabilities. Nifty trick, that, he thought, admiring the rainbow blotches from the (relative) safety of his camouflaged PA.

Morris' squad was breaking off, following after one of the blotches; instinctively, Samuel checked his sides, making sure his comrades were sticking close. As he continued, there was this uneasiness in his chest, and the Sarge's reference something ambushing them from behind hadn't helped. Even with three squads of Marines out here, he still had this feeling that it wouldn't be enough for whatever was out there.

He checked his gun again, and then found himself doing it yet again a second later. It hadn't changed a bit, imagine that. But in his concentration, his foot snagged around a vine - he stumbled over his feet for a couple steps, but somehow kept himself from falling over. Blasted jungle.

Sawyer did as instructed and activated his snakeskin camouflage suite, vanishing into the background as the system activated. Hefting his plasma autocannons he delved into his systems and ran some adjustments to his monoeye suite as Morris had directed to switch it to detect metals rather than heat and also had it start a specialized detection subroutine to detect any blasts of aether in the area.

"Sir." Ran pulled out a cigarette and lit it right there, taking extra care to vent the cancer smoke away from his superior.

"As you'd expect from a sniper, she is extremely cautious, and very methodical and thorough." At this point, Ran did away with the courtesy showed to Leon as his superior, and was blowing smoke all over the place as he spoke and exhaled.

Ran had to think a long way's back. He couldn't remember if he ever actually put her in a squad leadership position. "To be quite frank, sir. I always used her more of an asset than as a leader." Ran paused for a bit, noting that Volkov's loadout was more suited towards long-range combat than the close range combat that jungle warfare favors.

"She understands how to identify and decapitate leadership, there's no doubt about that, but I'm guessing you're a bit concerned with the fact that she currently has a long range weapon in the -jungle- " At that, Ran threw his cigarette down and stomped it dead.

"My suggestion? Shake her up a bit. Aim to draw them out with harassing forces, and then take advantage of that spread-out formation to let close combat specialist slip through those lines and harass them from all sides."
Ran shrugged, lighting up another cigarette. "But it's your call, sir."