((@piecewise: If i were to fire randomly at the end of the gangway with gungnir would the electricity flowing through the floor stun or kill the civilians?
@SC: you want me to boost jim up onto one of the containers so that you can use your amp with clear line if sight to the sods?
waltz over to the nearest hover trolley things, Begin guiding them into the hangar individually whilst waiting for the civilians to finish evacuating.
Once the civilians finish their evacuation or if the sods get reinforcements return to formation and provide covering fire for the rest of the team.))
You clap your hands, shout "WELP, TIME TO DO MANUAL LABOR!" and immediately begin shoving crates into the ship's hold.
Also, yeah, shooting unarmored civilians with the electricity from a Tesla carried via the medium of a laser is probably an extremely poor idea.
(You hurt civvies and I'll have to mace you, dude. And I don't mean pepper-spray. >:c Anyway, I would get on a crate, but that would make me quite the exposed target... so I have another idea, assuming it works. )
Jim climbs up and clings to Miyamoto's back with both legs and three arms (since one is holding a weapon), positioned so his head is just over Miya's shoulder where he can get a good view of everything in case he needs to use his amps. And he will use it on the Sods, assuming they launch an offensive. Otherwise, he just watches and waits so as not to endanger civilians unnecessarily.
You cling to Miyamoto like alcoholism to Thomas. You have a good view of the Sods from here, though they continue not to attack. Hmm, wonder if it's like steve said, these ones have only been told to hold their ground and prevent people from entering.
Calmly walk up to the sods and talk to them. Don't accidentally step on any civilians along the way.
"Hey there. Can I touch you?"
If permission is given, touch them and activate the electrified surface defense system.
If permission is not given, do the "Hey, what's that behind you?" trick and then forcefully touch them/grab them/punch them and activate the electricity.
It takes a great deal of jostling and shoving and very slowly moving forward while dragging your feet so as not to step on anyone's toes, but you eventually manage to make it up to the sods.
"Can I touch you?"
The sod closest to you, one of four clustered around the door, seems to think you're addressing him in particular. Your question does not seem like one that he's entirely sure how to answer. He just sort of stands there, head lulling around like he's trying to shake the answer out forcibly.
"I'm just gonna touch ya."
[aux:3+1]
You poke the sod in the head and electrical current hums across your armor and down into his face. He jerks violently for a moment, flesh blackening around your finger, before he jerks away and falls flat on his back.
[dex:1+1]
You don't even notice the other sods moving until they've closed the distance. Two of them lunge in close, drawing heavy metal batons as the move and jam them straight into the spaces in your knee joints, locking them up. The third, moves in front of you, ducks low and presses the release on your suit's hatch.
[Aux:2]
You fumble to override the external signal but you're not fast enough, and the hatch swings open.
[Dex:5+1]
The Sod is clambering up into your cockpit before the hatch is even all the way open, leading with his rifle. You panic, grasping wildly until you manage to grab one of his legs and tear him back out, partially crushing him in the process. You swing his body in a wide arc and hurl him off the gangway, smashing several civilians in the process. None go over the rail, thankfully, but they're certainly injured.
[Jim exo:2+2]
One of the remaining sods, the one on your left, crumples to the ground as his head is torn clean off his shoulders. It flies off into the distance like a homerun hit.
Lars glances over at Auron. "Brother Auron, why are you loading supplies on to the ship now? We have a mission to accomplish!"
Continue to seek opportunity to fire. Continue not to shoot civilians.
The Crowd continues to block the way when it comes to traditional methods of long range murder.
"I really should learn how to like...call down pillars of burning sulfur or something. I mean, I am a cleric after all."
Bishop sighs and shakes his head. "Stop fucking around with the trolleys Auron. You need to focus on the assault. You can get some of the trolleys when we come back."
Stop that idiot from running off to push trolleys and keep advancing, moving from cover to cover.
You Grab Auron and drag him away from his manual labor, dumping him behind a crate just as flint is attacked.
"I have a bad feeling about this, guys. Something is very wrong with those sods. Shall I euthanize them?"
Advance with arms stretched, ready to fire when hell breaks loose.
You advance in a slow zombie walk, arms out, internal Gatling mechanisms spinning up with a metallic whirrrrrrr. The last sod is ducked low, behind the crowd and Flint's leg. Hitting him from this angle is pretty much impossible. All you can do is wait as these last scattered members of the crowd file out.
((Funny how that little discussion before was rendered moot since we didn't even get a chance to do anything before the civvies started running.))
Allow/help Jim with piggyback riding the Avatar. Or just put him on my shoulders, whatever works.
Keep going forward, not stepping on peeps, you know the drill.
((By the way: if you have the time, would you feel like linking me to a photo of how an AoW is supposed to look like? You did this a few times in the past in regards to how a battlesuit looks like, which helped tremendously with picturing that correctly. Currently, I have this weird image of it looking like an AoW from WH40K, but sans the burning and with more metal plating.
"Hey Jim, now might be the time to use your amp. I mean, with that decomp you should be able to use it without collateral damage, and quietly frying their brain or heatblading their neck might be the quickest solution."
((@Paris: wait, what are you trying exactly? Cause walking to the sods means either getting in line with me behind the civilians or flying over to them.))
((@Pariah: This is a perfect example of why we're pooling our loot at the end of the mission: so people won't get caught up trying to gather shinies. Not that I terribly mind you doing this while we're forced to wait anyway, but it does look kinda weird. Does Auron have ADD by any chance? ))
You find yourself stuck in the same position Lukas is in, unable to fire for fear of injuring civies and perhaps Flint. Damn, being the good guy is a lot harder then indiscriminate murder.
As per what the avatar looks like, I'll describe it plainly without obfuscating behind the descriptive metaphors and similes and analogies I'm so damn fond of.
Ok, so imagine a synthflesh man. Easy enough right? If you've forgotten they basically look like living marble statues, but with the musculature extremely defined, to the point that it practically has black lines outlining every muscle. Now, take that synthflesh man and blow him up a bit, giving him and exaggerated, broad shouldered, thick limbed, hulking bruiser of a frame. Then make him 5 meters tall, stretch his neck to be just a little too long and his face into a sort of elongated snout, like
this. You know it's long because of the shape of the armor, but exactly what it looks like under there, you can't tell, the armor covers it. It's got 6 eyes, two on each side and two in front, plus more cameras hooked up across the armor.
Now the armor itself is black- a nice contrast on the white flesh- and it covers basically your entire damn body. It's angular, covered in sharp corners and hard edges, designed so that blows or bullets tend to hit at an angle and deflect, rather then hitting a nice flat surface and dumping all their kinetic energy right into it. The armor covers everything except your joints, and those are covered by an interior mesh of cloth armor stretched between the hard armor plates. Over that, is the cloak, which basically starts at your shoulders and hangs down around your entire body, leaving only that jagged, black metal head of yours exposed.
(Hmm, that reminds me.)
Attempt to commune with the machines within.
Nope. Your little internal machines don't seem too interested in what you're thinking.
On a side note, an interesting bit of trivia about mesk:
The machines inside him are small, but not THAT small. We're talking about the size of your thumbnail. So astute observers of him might notice that they can literally see things crawling around under his skin occasionally.
OH, ALSO ASSUME THE CIVIES ARE ALL CLEAR NOW!