RP [YSS Koun] Mission Two: The Machine with a Heart

The monster was now fully on the move. Aliset did her best to stun the monster using her own psionic attack. From the side of the monster is was nothing more than a dial up tone and did little to damper the rampage. Any hacking attempt would be a long process, if they managed to live that long. The team unleashed hell fury as all manner of rounds crashed into the shield of the creature. The rounds that managed to pass through seemed to deflect off its hardened armor legs. Only a few seemed to find flesh but it was no were near enough.

The creature roared once more as missiles locked onto it. One of its powerful legs slammed into the ground causing the team on the right to stumble. The leg then snapped up into the air and a large chunk of rock smashed into the missiles. Spark found themselves seconds away from being smashed by what was left of the slab of stone. Bodies of the NMX in this area had been turned into strawberry jam.

Loamai was first to leave a mark on the creature. The flaming aether sword dug in deep into the metal leg of the beast. However a moment later Loamai was flung away like a rag doll, though quickly recovered. This showed the team that within a certain space the shielding of the creature was no longer effective. Though this also meant they would be well within striking distance of the tentacles. The creature jumped into the air and landed near Adams and Makoto who were giving cover fire. Despite its size, it moved like one would expect of an advanced type. Making sure to not allow any one group get settled.

As soon as Alice connected, she'd wished she had just gone with the suicide mission with the charge. Her mind was flooded with what felt like an entire history of this machine world. The creature was more than just a sum of parts, it was connected to the entire world. Though everything was being drawn towards the creature. Like a parasite feeding from a host. It was taking all her might not to get sucked into the whirling abyss. Would she pull out or dive in deeper?

Alastair had not fired a single shot, leaving the fireworks to his team. For his part he did what he knew best, saving the NMX in need. At least what was left of them, as only a few were together enough to be considered alive. The one the monster had pinned was first saved, being the only one still mostly unharmed. "You fool, we are marked." The neko managed to say. The eyes of the creature turned red as it watched it's meal scurried off. Alastair used the rear view camera to see he was being chased. "Oh shit, looks like I dun gone made this thing angry." He called out to the team. "We need to slow this thing down!!" As he dodged the large pointed legs trying to turn him into an Alastair kabob.

Spark jumped out of the way of the stone, her suit's jump jets skating her to the side as she reloaded and resumed her attack. The Storm Rifle's flechettes were designed to tear through armor and disintegrate flesh, but were near useless against hardened shields like this. She gave just a moment's thought before speaking. "Ancilla, switch from ammo feed to pure plasma on the chaingun, we need to knock down that shield! Alice, see if you can get into the shield module and shut it down. Aliset, I need a supply drop from the Koun, painted target on my mark! Black Wolf, stay clear of my firing solution, but good hit with the Aether sword! Who had the breaching charges?"

She loaded a two step fragmentation grenade into her rifle's underslung launcher before firing it at the creature's faceplate. The Duskerians weren't known for being kind, limited as they were in tech base. Yamatai had advantages with directed energy weapons, Nepleslia had armor. The only things left for the NDC to lean into to distinguish themselves with an advantage was kinetic weapons and surviveability. Shields, life support systems, and the elimination of a target quickly by selection of special ammunition and reliance on field intelligence to know what rounds to pick.

Such was the 2-step, or two stage antipersonnel grenade for the classic 40mm launcher. The first arming stage was the launch, where it primed as it was fired. Then to hit and pass a shield at too low a velocity to be stopped completely, but enough to prime the impact fuse. Then to hit the target and explode. Designed to go through doors and thin walls, technically, but she figured it was worth a shot. She only had seven magazines of SR ammo left.

"Two more missiles on your mark, Ancilla! Aliset, where's that resupply?"

"Bit busy right now," Aliset responded, slamming her psychic might against the Mishhu's defenses over and over like a high school brawl and repeated punches as she hoped to keep it too busy to launch another psychic attack. "You wanna psyker brawl a goddamn floater? Kill it before it decides I'm not stronger!"

As the chaos unfolded in the room, Ancilla swiftly responded to Spark's commands and adjusted the power armor's offensive systems. "Switching to pure plasma on the chaingun," she confirmed, reconfiguring the weapon to target the creature's shield. At the same time, she directed her attention to Alice's hacking attempt, providing real-time guidance to assist in disabling the shield module. "Alice, keep pushing, we need that shield down. Stay focused, you can do this."

As the battle raged on, Ancilla coordinated the team's efforts, providing tactical advice and monitoring the creature's movements. "Two more missiles primed and standing by," she announced, ready to unleash a fresh wave of firepower at the creature when the time was right. With Aliset maintaining the psychic assault and Spark leading the charge, the team worked together in a coordinated effort to bring down the formidable adversary before them.

"Yeah... about that..." Alice replied as she winced in pain, putting all of her focus into not having her brain melt out of her ears; she holstered her service pistol so she'd not have to put the extra brainpower into using it, not like it would have been any use while the heavier weaponry was barely scratching the huge monster. "Running through the suit as a proxy, would rather not have my brain exploded right here..." She muttered to herself before starting to route her hacking attempt from herself to the suits systems, before going into the alien machinery. Sure, it might have been slower than what she could do by a direct connection; but at least if it sent any hacking attempts back the only thing to blow up would be the processor in the suit... Not ideal, but would be better than the alternative.

After making herself relatively safe, Alice went about working with Ancilla to send reams of junk data at the things shield systems. While the connection with the machine world was interesting, Alice was hardly in the mood to study it at that moment; leave it to the star army analysts that would no doubt be pouring over their combat logs, if they managed to survive this. So she tried to focus herself just on the shield system and blocked as much of the extra data as much as she could. "Anyone feel like sticking this thing on it once the shields are down?" Alice asked, before she let out a gasp of pain as her implants were running far hotter than comfortable for too long, she held up the breaching charge; designed for boarding parties needing to blow through capital ship armour it'd do the job on this easily enough, if it could be attached.

The claws of the beast swept through the cover that Adams and Makoto were behind, Adams' right leg was taken just above the knee, causing her to topple backwards. Makato wasn't as luck, being bisected by the claw at the waist and the force knocking her two halfs apart. Iomai flipped as she was knocked backwards by the leg, advancing again with slashes. Sacre actived her teleport, appearing close to Adams who was sitting against a wall and shooting at the Advanced. She lay down, stopping Adams' bleeding as her NSP defended her. The other members of the fireteam did their best to add thier supporting fire to the rest of the Koun's team.

While ran for his life, he could see the team was pulling together a plan. On some level, he could sense the team was enjoying this fight. At least he hoped so else this would feel like nothing more than a do or die situation.

The chain gun went from barking fire to a standstill. A moment later it was once more spewing plasma. The shield of the creature flittered as first then it started to crack like glass. It was not enough to straight break the shield but it was causing holes to form. As the diamond shaped shield would break, another would fill in moments later. The first of the fragmentation grenade worked as intended. It landed right on the shield and a moment later exploded the second charge into the creature. A part of its face armor break off from the impact. The second grenade passed through the shield and landed on a leg joint. The first charge damaged the joint and the second split the leg in half. As a thank you, the creature managed to punch a hole in his shoulder using a tentacle.

Aliset was in an all out war that none could see. Yet if one could imagine lightning and sparks, this is exactly what the psychic would take form as. While at the moment it was a complete stalemate, it was having a positive effect on the war efforts. One that even the creature was shocked to came face to face with. It was taking all its energy to push back the attack of Aliset. Something that pissed it off to no end as Aliset was a bug, a nothing before its might. Yet here it stood, locked in an even duel. She could feel the stress starting to build. Was that blood she felt coming from her nose?

Aboard the Koun the crew was quickly working to make sense of this monster. It had little details to work with that only added to the complex nature of finding answers. However, one answer Akino could provide would be in reply to the request coming from Spark. The area they fought made it simple given that the roof was a glass dome. "Roger, landing supply pod inbound. Pop smoke to indicate landing zone." Akino called out to the team.

Alastair was doing his part to keep this creature busy. It was torn between getting a meal, stomping on Aliset or being just flat out pissed off at everyone else. Alastair got word regarding marking for the landing supply pod. He got the bright idea to just piss this thing off a little more. He dodged a leg which caught part of his body. He held fast the rescue and also managed to drop a smoke under the creature. As it was about to strike another blow, a blinding light blasted through the dome. The supply pod targeted the smoke and crashed straight into the monster. The top armor cracked as it swatted away the pod. It crashed not far from Spark, as the hatch blew off to expose the cargo inside it. Alastair landed and popped up on his feet. He coughed and felt the warm blood. It was not fatal but he for sure broke a few things. Lucky for him, the rescue seemed to be mostly unharmed.

Ancilla was playing a huge roll in keeping everything coordinated. A feat that was much required in this fight for from the outside would look like complete chaos. The boss was strong, angry and looking to kill. And would do so by whatever means required to meet this goal. Aliset was going great to block most of the psychic attacks, Ancilla would still feel the effects from it, minor damage was building up.

Alice could sense the damage to the shields was giving aid to her cause. The junk data would lessen and a clear target was coming into view. The tricky part was not getting smashed by falling rocks as the creature moved around. Though the added support of the Black wolf was shining through, allowing Alice to focus on the target at hand. What seemed like an hour was but a few minutes. The shield core came into view, then like a spark in a gas tank, shattered and was then gone. The shield was no more but some of the team had taken damage. Some more than others.

Sacre at the moment was one of the few who had not taken much damage. Mainly because she was bouncing around the battlefield like a kid hyped up on sugar. Her long body and flexible tail allowed for her to keep on the move. Up, sideways, down and under. One round managed to slip through the shield and slam into the back of its head. As she moved past its view, she could sense one of its eyes was locked on her. It was gearing up to strike if she stopped moving.

The Koun sent out an update on the battle progress. Team was getting beaten up but ammo was still good. The primary shield had failed, leaving only shield projections left to deal with. Armor was damaged but had a ways to go.

"Shield's down," Spark called, bringing her Storm Rifle back to bear as she kicked the jets again, skating to the side to engage head-on. She let the medical nanomachines do their work, sealing the breach in the Revenant's hull and her own skin with equal efficiency. "TOW missiles Four and Five, fire at will!"

She brought the freshly reloaded Storm Rifle to bear and began working on emptying her second magazine into the creature's damaged faceplate as her offhand began the process of loading a second two step fragmentation grenade to complement the barrage of near hypersonic poweder core flechettes designed to bore through armor, tumble, shatter, and become supersonic powder inside of the flesh behind it.

~~~

Aliset ignored the blood running down her nose as she repositioned, getting herself closer to strengthen the signal, force sensation and hallucination to merge and build into her next psychic attack, one that would present as a wave of agony disguising the sensory transition into a perception trap, one where she could twist its own imagination as a hostile entity to it and let it go free while she backed off. The trick was shoving the great beast into the bag. She knew full well she wasn't on the same level as this Mishhu, but she could certainly punch well above her weight class, and force it to accept her as an equal, if hostile, psychic presence. If it thought she was equal, it might hesitate.

She didn't know if this atmosphere would be breathable, but either way, she would be out of commission for a few minutes when this was done. Her head throbbed, her body aching, and she could hear her heart roaring in her ears. But if she could bring its mind to a halt, for even a moment, the body wouldn't be far behind.

"I am Aliset of Koun, Last Daughter of Skydas, and you will face me and me alone!" She let her mind amplify her shout as she unleashed her attack, trying to get it to ignore the rest of the team, accept her reality as its own, and fall into her psychic trap as she twisted the back end of her attack from pain into overwhelming pleasure.

Sacre bounced her soldier out of danger before returning to the attack. Her shoulder cannons shot shot as Aten found firing solutions to hit the weak points he was identifying, allowing Sacre to focus on getting them where they needed to be. Her team had taken damage, and one of them had been sent to ST by the rampaging monster. However, they were focused and trained, not distracted by the chaos around them. Their training came into focus and they acted as one to keep a flanking force to the rest of the Koun's crew and harassing the Mishhu.

Ancilla was relentless in her efforts, tirelessly demonstrating the capabilities of an AI of her caliber. As she worked alongside her partner, Spark, her dedication shone through as she assisted Alice in the battle against the alien creatures. With precision and speed, Ancilla flooded the enemy's shields with reams of junk data, a calculated move to weaken their defenses.


From within the Revenant power Armor's systems that she inhabited, Ancilla monitored the progress of the battle with keen focus. She observed with satisfaction as the shields of the alien creatures began to falter under the onslaught of her data barrage. A grin tugged at the corners of her virtual lips, a silent acknowledgment of the success achieved thus far.


But amidst the triumph, Ancilla remained steadfastly aware that the task was far from over. Despite the temporary advantage gained, she knew that complacency was not an option. With a sense of determination burning within her circuits, Ancilla continued to support Spark in any way possible, ready to adapt and strategize as the battle unfolded. For she understood that victory was not merely in breaking the enemy's defenses but in the resilience and resourcefulness displayed in the face of adversity.


With unwavering trust in Spark and the rest of the team's ability to handle the creature, Ancilla's attention swiftly shifted to Aliset, a member of their crew, who stepped forward with determination. As Aliset proclaimed her identity and lineage, her voice resonated with an otherworldly power, amplified by her focused intent.


Ancilla observed with a mix of curiosity and admiration as Aliset initiated her attack, tapping into her psychic abilities with precision and purpose. With each word and gesture, Aliset sought to assert her dominance over the creature, compelling it to acknowledge her as the sole opponent worthy of its attention.

Alastair was doing his best to keep on his own two feet. He was hurting bad and would need to rely on the crew to pull this one through. He weaved past Spark who had just launched a pair of tow missiles. They wizzed up and into the air leaving a trail of smoke behind. With the shield gone, these would do some damage. The first blasted against the armor that remained on the face of the Mishhu. A large piece of it exploded off into a field of shrapnel. The second round punch a nice size hole into the flesh of the creature. In pain it let out a psychic scream.

Aliset dropped to the floor when the scream hit. Though no one else would feel the effects. It was using all of its might to hold back the attacks of Aliset. A locked in duel of the minds. One that would leave both parties damaged. For the nose bleed Aliset had returned in kind. Slowly each of its bug eyes filled with blood. The damage becoming more clear as the fight went on.

The second Tow smashed into the leg of the creature. Now having lost three legs out of the eight it was having one hell of a time standing. The quick pace had been tamped down to that of a walk. This was buying time for the crew to position and for Alastair to seek help for the NMX. The rounds from the storm rifle were now hitting more flesh than armor. Though even the flesh of the creature was hard as any known metal. Though the damage was becoming clear.

Sacre had rounded up the team and regrouped. Some had been lost but this only inspired them to fight even harder. The more that were wounded the harder they all fought. The team along with Spark were putting the real hurt onto the beast. Sacre was the first to notice what looked to be a pause, followed by a step back. Was this creature starting to have second thoughts?

Ancilla in her own right was an unsung hero for this fight. Having brought down the shield and also support the team as a whole. Everyone could feel the warm embrace of Ancilla, giving them heart to push the fight. Though she could tell that Aliset was reaching her own limit. One that might on some level be fatal. Though her feeling was correct that the battle had turned. From within her connection with the beast she could sense one thing growing, fear.

Aliset had been been mid step when the psychic scream hit her like a sledgehammer and she dropped, her head and chest throbbing as her heart beat fast enough to set off a medical alert in her armor, which she dismissed as her head bounced off the inside of her helmet, unleashing the agony in her body, the rage and hate built up over hundreds of thousands of millenia of her people's pacifism and refusal of involvement. She sent wave of her own nightmares, from her husbands' deaths to her dream of Turassiel's fracturing under Kuvexian fire, the Crab on Shurista and how it died piteous and slow to uranium fire from an incensed farmer. All of her trauma was hurled at the creature with the underscored message of "You will not live to watch your people burn. Your race is a sad footnote, and Skydas will consume you all. If you cannot defeat me, know I will see to this task myself. I will see the last Mishhuvurthyar die by my hand, prey."

She couldn't keep this up much longer, and she knew it as she forced herself to her knees before feeling her armor grabbed by the scruff, hauled up, and tossed to cover by Spark's hulking Revenant.

"Reloading!" Spark called after the downed psyker was safely outside the direct fire area. The empty magazine popped over her shoulder, some part of her mind directing the chaingun to switch back to kinetic rounds, favoring high explosive armor penetrating if she could as she began advancing again. A twist of her ankle fired the jump jets to get close to Alice, sliding to cover her. "Ward, give me the charges and pull back with the captain. Our medic's in there, and I need you rendering first aid. Psyker's down, we're three fighters down, and I'm red on ammo. Go! I'll resupply when we kill this thing!"

With a snap of her wrist, the Storm Rifle closed, rails whining to life as Spark threw another HE grenade into her launcher, popping that as her thumb brought the rifle into semiautomatic mode and she started rapidly pressing the trigger, over and over aiming for eyes, exposed armor, leg joints, or tentacle bases, whatever she could see. She refused to allow it to retreat. "Ancilla, you're an angel, but I need that chaingun weaned and on ammo, now. Then go ahead and dump every TOW we have left! Black Wolf, I'm holding the doorway open, if you can, evac your wounded!"

"Oh uhhh, right, the charge. It's primed to go!" There was a slight waver to Alice's voice, as well as a slight shake to her hand despite the armour steadying her movements as she handed over the huge bulky device. Even with her power armour working, it still required two hands to handle properly as she handed it over to Spark and her frayed nerves weren't helping; she made sure to keep the now active instant adhesive front side from touching her or Spark. "I've rigged a failsafe too, just in-case the remote doesn't work." She pointed to a bright yellow pull tab sticking out of the back of the oversized breaching charge. "Soon as you pull it, you get 60 seconds. Then anything on the other side of it short of battleship grade reactor armour gets turned to dust... Ownership of the remote should be with youuuu.... Now." A small notification appeared in the corner of Spark's hud, informing her that her armour had been given the remote activation codes for the charge. Alice flashed the Duskerian a slight smile, before realising that she wouldn't see it through the engineers full face covering helmet. Instead, she opted to give her a quick pat on the shoulder. "Good luck Spark, see ya on the other side."

With that, Alice packed up the small amount of her tools she'd taken out to rig up the pull tab on the limpet charge and pulled back with the rest of the less combat focused crew. There was plenty of damaged power armour between them all after all and while Alice might not have been particularly experienced in e-warfare, field repairs had put her right into her element. She would have first tried to drag anyone not moving out of the room; before she set to work doing patch repairs on anyone in armour too damaged to move properly, as well as helping strip damaged armour off for the medic to be able to do their job easier.

Still, what a hell of a first deployment ey?

Sacre moved the wounded out of the direct line of fire, patching those who were still healthy enough to get back into the fight and saving those who couldn't. She made use of the door being held open to get the ones she couldn't immediately return to the combat out of the line of mire. She had trained her battlefield awareness that she could feel the shift and the giant Mishhu start to move backwards. "Ioamai, lead an offense. We don't want to leave it behind us." She told her her second. The unwounded members of Blackwolf zoomed around the Misshu, keeping apart and flanking so that at least one person had a good shot at the giant many tenticled monstrosity at a time. Two of them charged in with swords blazing on Ioamai's flanks, hacking and cutting away tenicles and limbs.

After what seemed like hours, the fight had started to turn in favor of the team. The machine Mishhu was being cut limb to limb with each passing moment. While the team had suffered many blows, some even fatal the heroes of the story fought on. Spark had been given the explosive charges and knew exactly what to do with them. As Spark neared a wild tow missile had blown out the last support leg on one side. The large beast crashed into the ground. For a moment the fighting had paused as the dust settled. The crew walked closer to the beast to get a better look.

Sacre was the first to give her regards, a moment later after hacking she spit a huge loogie onto the beast. This was then followed with blasting one of its eyes out with her weapon. Clearly she had enough of this shit and glad to be on the winning side, even if it had cost her some of the black guard team.

Across the room Ali was laying flat out on the floor. The sensors indicated she wasn't dead though given her brain scan she wasn't having a good time. She'd fight to see another day but could already tell this had changed her. A new depth of mind had been unlocked and time would tell if this would be a bane or a boon. Sacre had made it over and lifted Ali off the floor and headed towards the exit.

Alastair and Alice met up towards the door. He reached over and gave her a pat on the head. By now he had tossed the NMX over his shoulder and carried her around. He was beaten but alive. The cracks in his armor indicated he was just as broken on the inside.

Lastly Spark had made their way over to the creature. It did its best to try and crawl away. Like a vampire trying to hide from the sunlight. It had been bested and knew all too well that mercy was not an option. Spark wasted no time to slap the explosives on the back of the Mishhu. With a yank the bombs were armed.

The entire team walked to the exit. There was no celebration, only a sense of pride filled the room. A blinding light then erupted as the explosives ignited. In a flash the creature was reduced to nothing but a pile of molten metal and ash. Just prior to being blasted into nothing, those that could hear it, would get a message. The creature feared them, not because they had won but because even if they had lost that resolve would not have been broken. It defied all logic, the very nature to preserve ones self was void. The following fireball burned brightly behind them as they slow walked out the exit. The camera that was deployed from the Koun slowly zoomed out and spun around away from the team. This was a moment that would be captured in cinematic fashion, like it had been part of an action movie.

Alastair then broke his silence. "Remind me next time when I get the urge to capture them all, just remind me of this. Gawd I feel every bone in my body is broken." He said laughing and wheezing in pain. "Lets head back crew, the clean up team can take it from here."

Ancilla rested within the cyberspace domain of the Power Armor she’d always inhabited as a Power Armor AI. Spark, her partner, would be moving the Revant Mark 3 armor as usual, so Ancilla just needed to relax. They’d done well, completed a mission, and Ancilla proved just how useful she could be as well. Their captain Alastair could hear her. “You poor captain,” Ancilla teased gently, her tone a mixture of concern and playful affection. “If you’d like, I could give you a massage or something, or better yet, have our resident medic Sacre take a look to see if your bones are really broken or just feel that way. Yeah, that might be better.” She paused, as if contemplating the next course of action, then continued with a soft smile in her voice, “Still, I am glad this mission is over. I hope I have proven how useful I can be.”