Team DEEP TROUBLEBrother Lars - Team Deep
Algis save us...
Am I even close to alive? Can I unfuck myself enough to get up? Shoot it with a 10-burst of shard launcher? Start praying? Arm the Walking Nuke for frequency detonation and transmit the code to Miyamoto? Do anything of that I can do.
Non-Nuclear ammo is loaded in the cannon, right?
You are indeed alive, though the cockpit of your suit is a bit crushed in. The display in front of you is rattling of damage reports and highlighting damaged areas on the schematics before automatically switching to backup and alternative systems if they're available. The left arm got nearly severed at some point in the trip across the room and is hanging, dead, from two actuators and a bundle of wire. The right still works, and the legs seem ok, but the reactor is damaged and shutting down so you're on backup power, which won't last for long. The cannon reads as being functional, though several of the aiming servos are damaged so you're gonna need to manually aim via body movement. You pull your arm out of the left control tube and use it to eject the dead arm and the broken armor frames. You've only got one layer of plate left above the cockpit.
You lurch the suit forward, tearing yourself up and out of the boxes. You point your shard launcher and squeeze the trigger but it just hemorrhages fluidl; some internal part clearly damaged. You toss it aside and pull out the Raduga instead.
That nuke of yours could prove useful as a last ditch attack, but you doubt you'd be able to make use of it without simply running into the thing and suicide bombing it.
Mash the call elevator button with the fury.
Overload the manipulator, toss it at the thing, and run.
BUTTON-MASHING INTENSIFIES
You run towards the elevator, intent on smashing the up button and hoping that it can somehow outrun the arbiter. You're really not planning very far ahead right now, honestly. A bit too freaked out.
Sizing the current situation up, Yancy gets an idea. He opens an encrypted private channel to all of Deep Squad:
"I had an idea that doesn't involve suicide bombing him! I'm pretty sure he hasn't detected Lyra with her stealth, and AOPs are terrifying-but they don't have any flight capabilities, just unholy speed and agility! Lyra, amp-lift him before he gets really going! Everyone else, when he takes an unexpected flight, unload on him with everything you've got!"
If this happens as planned, utterly unload on him with the Sibilius!
You make ready to fire.
Team Deep
New action: think about life. Does it end now content or with regrets at things not done? If death will be boring, will that be a relief?
While doing this, gauge the success of Lyra's action. If it works, heat the chest 100 degrees and then run. Otherwise, just run towards the elevator.
You join the other guy sprinting for the elevator.
Lyra, Team Deep
Here I am and here I stand.
Cloaked and silent, I move to the front of the team and watch the walking blender advance, ready to evade the blurring flurry of attacks I expect it to make. I shift to one side and slowly circle around it, watching it move and allowing things to remain slow-paced as long as it wants to let it stay that way. I'm listening for the sounds of the wires in its hands, watching for the blur of it moving, and watching for if it is watching me.
Now.
Once it nears the group, or begins its attacks, is when I'm going to make my own moves. I am carefully watching its attacks and motions, and what I do is going to depend on what it does.
case 1: it is able to notice Lyra, and focuses on her
In this case, I'm going to have no choice but to focus on evasion. I cannot afford to let it land a single attack upon me, be it wire, club, or manip. I stay cloaked on the off-chance that it will make the thing work harder to target me, but I don't focus on it or try to maximize its potential, instead going pure evasion, and if I have to use my mass-manip amp on myself to stay in one piece, I will do so. If necessary I can and will use the thing to change direction in midair.
case 2: It is not able to notice Lyra, and moves slowly towards the team
This is the optimal case, and in it my action is simple, I use my mass-manip amp from my concealed position to quite literally rip the thing apart. It and I are both silent and invisible, there will be no telegraphing my attack or warning, so I have a pretty good chance of managing to pull it off.
case 3: It does? notice Lyra, but focuses the team anyway
this is a tricky one, I'll want to pull its attention to me, without getting myself insta-killed. I'll try to forcewall it away from my teammates, but once it focues on me i'm going to have to immediately switch back to defense.
in any case, after the initial attack starts I'm going to have to be adaptive and react to what it is doing. I want to either immobilize it or rip it apart with my mass manip, without it blending me into scraps of meat. I'll be mostly on defense, and will be aware that at the speeds we're going to be engaging at and with my being cloaked, my teammates are going to have trouble not hitting me, so I'll have to keep them in my peripheral awareness in case they attack me by accident. overall though, once the AoP focuses on me, I'm going to be on defense unless it messes up. If it does sit still long enough for me to make a killshot though with my mass manip amp, I'll take it.
((back, and we are in serious trouble. people, if someone HAS to fight this thing up close, let Lyra. She's a synthcat designed specifically for speed with +4 dex. she's the only one with a chance of avoiding getting hit for a turn. and I don't think End matters vs this thing. if it hits you, you're dead.))
EDIT: ((Am reading the OOC thread right now and am having second thoughts, will be done editing in about 2 hours. I literally JUST got back.))
((Edit 2: yeah, levitation won't do anything to this, rewriting, also, I overestimated the damage it does with its attacks. End might matter for one blow, as long as it's just one.))
Edit 3: done.
You move quickly off to the side as the thing seems to focus on lars, and attempt to tear it apart with a single, very powerful mental attack.
You feel the attack begin, feel the invisible force lash out of you and close in on the arbiter like a great bear trap of crushing, tearing teeth. But as the teeth bite down, they hit something. It feels like biting down as hard as you can on a rock with the teeth of your mind. You stagger and the air around the Arbiter glimmers momentarily.
Gen.Knowledge [5]
"Automanips!" you hiss over the radio, "It's got protective automanips!"
The Arbiter moves with extreme speed. Not toward anyone in particular, but rather in a sort of spiraling forward lunge toward the elevator. As it leaps, thin wires spool out of it's hand and slice across the room. They don't follow any easily guessed pattern, they wriggle and jerk about, slicing through anything they touch.
Lyra dex [1]
Lyra End [1]
Yancy dex [5]
Tek Dex [6]
Tad dex [5]
The black die appears to have a strange appetite. Feed it one person and it is nice to the others. Odd.
Yancy, who is on the side of the room, dodges blindly as the Arbiter flies past and manages to somehow get through the wall of slicing wires unscathed. Tek tries much the same move, dodging forward, through the wires, but loses his feet in the process. Should have tucked and rolled. Taddock dodges away and into the elevator, saved by the fact that the Arbiter's leap ended before it reached him.
Unfortunately, now Taddok and Yancy are standing in an enclosed space with an Arbiter between them and the exit.
Also unfortunately, despite her body literally being built for this and her great skill with the subject matter, Lyra somehow completely flubs it, just dives head first into the wires and gets sliced into gibbets. However, she does have an amp and a good score there, so lets see if maybe her brain case survives thanks to her shielding herself at the last possible instant.
[5]
Well, her body is sushi but at least her brain survived for the moment.
TEAM SHALLOWWhats happening here is happening in terms of seconds, so it's gonna take you this turn and maybe the next to get back to the elevator. If you want to change actions you can do so, or you can just repost them.
It punches straight through the cockpit and controlling computer. The shuttle enters an automated hover mode, floating in place.
Send other shuttle back then. How long can that shuttle stay like that? And can I still access its cameras? Can I determine where that shot came from?
Also, can you describe how the elevator and its shaft looks like? and are there any alternative ways to go up or down (eg stairs) that we know of? At what level is the elevator now?
After seeing the mechanoid killer emerge from it's ambush spot, Miya stares in disbelief for a short moment.
"Fuck. We were bound to encounter one someday... but not now. Shit, the one time I'm not there. Aaargh!"
Then, he recomposes himself. Those men down there weren't dead, yet, so he had to see to what little he could do from up in the ship. He opened up his commlink.
To Deep team:
"Lars, you have a nuclear round loaded? I really fucking hope you do. Just shoot it and detonate it as close as you can, but make sure it can't bat it out of the sky or shockwave it away. Those things are freakily fast. Lyra, you need to put up a wall of force just as the nuke goes of to try and protect your team, like what Pancaek did last mission. There is no half-assing this, and it WILL dodge direct attacks. Tek, wait with overloading, only do it if Lars' nuke fails. Rest of you start shooting it with whatever you have while retreating to the elevator. I doubt you can damage it, or even hit it, but that might slow it down while dodging."
And on a personal comm to Lars:
"And if you can, arm that nuke with legs you once got, and link me up for remote detonation. Just in case you guys can't... You know."
"Change of plans Shallow Team. Deep team's in trouble and we're gonna go save their asses. Anyone know how to kill an arbiter of peace?
Everyone who can't fly hang on to me or Flint. We're going down the elevator shaft."
"Negative on that. It'll be a chaos down there in an instant, I don't need more men walking in to a killzone or an overload. And we might need you to fly your own team back up. Organize your squad now and prepare to either get out or pour heavy ordnance down the elevator shaft. No heroics here, or you all die."
...well fuck me sideways, is that a fucking arbiter of peace?! We're completely fucked,aren't we?"
Use camera feed link to confirm with Miya/Steve if that's an actual arbiter of peace. If not, great! go full rock and roll with the Sibilius. If it IS, let Tek overload his manip and start running for elevator.
Try to precisely identify their assailant.
Can/should we do a Lyra action? Cause if Miya's plan is to be used, her cooperation is very much needed. But this is kinda a tense and crucial moment, so I dunno. If Lars ends up trying that shot, I'll edit in an action for her, unless people object that it'd be ooc for her or something.
It can stay like that for quite a while.
You still can, yes.
It seems to have come from the south west, but you can't be sure exactly where in that direction.
Oh yeah, it's an arbiter.
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Topic: Mission 22: Hero Killer (Read 33788 times)