Nerrone's Rangers IC

Bianca made the smart choice by spin jumping outta of the way and somehow ended up on one of the mech's backs. She was really lucky or she would have ended up in many pieces. The mech turned around it's head, spotting the Elvar. It was not happy having a living target on it's back.

Right...I better get into action already.

It was hard to lodge her Bone Tusks Blades into it's head cause the blasted thing kept trying to shake her off. Things could not have gone better in her situation.
----
(Chalen) "Ayieeh! I hate mechs so much! I would mind something non machine compared to this!!"
The poor Space Sprite couldn't take it any more. He let out the horrible percing scream which is bound to cause ears bleed or something to go super mental. Though Chalen is closer to the *helpless* group. He managed to open his eyes for a few seconds only to find both Flank and Bor having a scrape of trouble though it may seem Flank needed help the most. Once again, Chalen is about to save the Ravis's life. He then closed his eyes, aimed himself at the mechs that gave Flank a hard time while still screaming horribly.

Flank pointed his cannon at the floor in front of his right foot as the mech came slashing at his from his right, blocking both sets of wrist blades with the barrel. With the robot's advance halted, he stepped into a cross stance, his left foot behind, past his right. He pivoted on both feet, spinning to the left and swinging a hammer fist with his left hand at the mech's now unguarded head. The blow knocked it over, and Flank let off three bullets to finish it off.

He was about to send another anti-aircraft round bellowing at the other mech when a flying, screaming object barrelled into it while it was halfway through its leap, and both ended up on the floor as a result. Only once it engaged in a tight wrestle with the mech could Flank see that the object was Chalen. Both combatants raked at each other with their sharp extremities, although the space sprite was small and nimble enough to dodge the mech's attacks.

"Hold on," he said to Chalen as he reached down behind him and yanked the arm off the robot he had almost completely crushed. He turned back around, and with a little caution, slipped his foot inside the mech's elbow and pinned the arm to the floor, straightening it out to keep its wrist blades away from Chalen. Flank then proceeded to drive the bladed limb in his hands down at the mech's wrist in the hopes of skewering it to the floor.

With both mechs out of the way, Flank brought his cannon up and picked out another target. This one was leaping upon the Lynski, close to carving him in two with its own wrist blades. He fired straight at the mech, hoping to intercept it and knock it out of the air before it could land a hit on Bor.

Bor knew that challenging a mech to a knife fight was more than a little crazy. But if he fired his plasma gun at this range, the shrapnel from the blast would probably kill him. The best he could hope for at the moment was to fend it off long enough to get to a safe firing distance.

But as the mech approached, it unexpectedly found itself without a head. Flank's blast had blown it to smithereens.

Bor dove backward, barely dodging the red-hot shards of metal. When this is over, he thought, I'm either gonna hug Flank, or kill him. He turned his sights toward the robot Bianca was clinging to. "Bianca, get off him!" he yelled. He waited three seconds, then fired.

Rhak took a slight step to his left (the mechs right), and dragged his pistol, firing it seven times at an almost point-blanc space against the mech's torso.
As the sound of past battles echoed through his skull as waves of calm went through him.
This wasn't the time to lose his temper, even though most of the mercs reminded him of amatuers, grunts just finished from boot camp.

Mitchz95 wrote:

[/i] He turned his sights toward the robot Bianca was clinging to. "Bianca, get off him!" he yelled. He waited three seconds, then fired.

Bianca heard Bor's shouts, not before giving a swift kick to the mech's head and boldly yelled:
"Syenara loser!" Then jumped as Bor fired his shot. Bianca braced herself for the metal shards that were to follow shortly.
-----
Chalen barrelled into the mech and was clawing at him like a wild animal. He did not care if he might have broken a few bones in his body (though he still wore his dented armour), he wanted to kill this hunk of metal git dead.
"Raaaaagh!"
He kept slashing away till the mech finally gave up and *died*. Chalen slowly rose up and moved away from the thing's body. Small electric currents ran around his claws and they also stained with oil along with dried blood from past battles. Chalen panted and grunted. He looked for his next mech victim however non seem to be left alive...

Even as the first mech that had passed through the door ruptured and fell to the ground in front of Bianca, the second dashed through — it was only with a fortunate swing of the butt of his rifle that Dagon avoided the construct's flashing blades. With the extra split second and meter of space afforded him by this maneuver, he swung his weapon around and loosed a volley of shots into his target, sending it toppling over backwards to join its companion in a sad heap of scrap on the floor.

Nearby, Rhak administered a similar treatment to his own aggressor, bringing down the final scout mech in a flurry of sparks and spilled hydraulic fluid.


The group had now effectively cut down ten more of the enemy. Unfortunately, they were still heavily outnumbered by their automated opponents, and blaster bolts continued to rain down on the Rangers from the far side of the darkened room.

"Everyone, fall back," Dagon said into the comms, over the continuing sounds of gunfire, "Up the stairs!"


((Anyone alive who wishes to participate in shenanigans at the top of the tower, please make a post, even a short one, now. ))

Bor complied.



((You did say a short post was okay. ))

(Bianca) "Well since we have slim chances of beating those automated things on ground, I'd best get moving towards the stairs." She had to find a *certain* team mate first before she could proceed further. Dodging from the shots, the Elvar avoided them all as best as she could. Bianca saw Chalen (who is still near the heap of the fallen mech) and whistled. That got the Space Sprite's attention. Chalen flew on over towards Bianca but still wore the same expression on his face. Bianca frowned at her friend but didn't say anything as it wasen't the time to do as such. She simply said to Chalen:"We have to get up those stairs and fast unless your too suddenly moody to listen to me."
Bianca then made her way and in two minutes, is followed by Chalen. Encouraging himself to move a bit more, his wings beated faster. Somehow he had missed being shot at, as Chalen is to busy catching up and to Dagon's position.

Rhak heard Dagon's order and retreated, reloading his borrowed rifle and shooting short bursts at th mechswhile he went back to the stairs.

Flank didn't need a second hint or another bleeding body part, so he back-pedalled away from the mechs, and with a short glance at Grey, turned around and bolted straight up the stairs.

Grecsh and Xol joined the procession of the Rangers barreling up the stairs, both of them reloading their weapons after expending a frustratingly large amount of ammo.

((EDIT: I've caught Tala's page-owning disease! D:))

Pursued by the remainder of the automated defence mechs, the Rangers made their way up the stairwell. With the advantage of higher ground and the bends in the staircase acting in their favour, the group was able to easily take out the first enemies to poke their heads beyond the entrance to the second floor. The chase continued for another five floors, after which the mechs gave up on them completely.

For the next few floors the Rangers ascended in silence, each getting their breath back in the wake of the fight.

"I'm not getting a response from the crew downstairs," Kwa said, after a moment with one hand pressed against her comlink, "Did anyone see Grey make it out of there?" It appeared no-one had.


While they stewed on the implications and Kwa continued to try the comms, Dagon suddenly burst out: "I've got it!"

"What?" Kwa replied quizzically.

"It's been bothering me this whole time: why didn't they just blow this place up? The Kingdom, I mean."

A frown was Kwa's only response, so he continued: "These guys waltzed in here, right, took control of the security systems and had them slaughter everyone inside — they had control of the whole building, so... why not just wreck the command hub from the inside and leave? That'd do the job, right?"

"It would," Kwa turned and spoke into her comm device again: "Governor Dier: something you're not telling us?"

"No!" came the governor's affronted reply, "we have everything: remote scans, video feeds, field reports; everything we have agrees with what I have told you."

"I believe him," Dagon chimed in, "I dunno exactly what it is, but there's something we're missing here..."

Bor considered the problem. "This command center controls the city's defenses, right? Maybe the Kingdom is trying to seize control of that stuff for their own use. Maybe they're trying to establish Santa Frerraro as a staging point for future incursions into this sector."

"No," Flank said gruffly, "it's the city they want. Or at least something that's in the city. Obviously a ship that big is bound to have something more powerful than a bunch of fireworks. I swear I've never seen a vessel of that calibre that wasn't armed to the teeth with anti-matter bombs and missiles. Why haven't they used them, then? Because they need the place to be intact."

He paused for breath. It was hard to talk at length after heaving his body weight up five flights of stairs, and lacking a fair portion of his bodily fluids just made it painful.

"There's something here," he went on, "in the city, that the Kingdom either already owns or wants to own. They're just wiping out the pointless infrastructure, to scare everyone away, while they use Sapphire Point to defend whatever it is they're really doing. Otherwise, they'd just shove a handful of anti-matter missiles up the city's tailpipe and be done with it. That's what I would have done."

"I don't got anything about the Kingdom. Their agenda is split. The small group I worked for a long time ago, used the 'divide and conquer' strategy." Rhak said, as he took long steps on the stairs. "But as I've said, that was a long time ago."
"I think they want the city as an outpost. Prepare it for a larger force to come in. But they could have used any other planet, so this old dust boll apparently have something important on it."

The group was making good progress up the stairwell: it was hard work, but the floors were falling away beneath their feet — for their part, Kwa and Dagon had both long since stopped checking the number of the latest level to pass them by.


"Far as I know," Dagon replied, "the only thing worth having on this Spodeforsaken dust-ball is that... stuff? What was it called, what the cities were fighting over?"

"Zirthinnite ore," said Kwa.

"What does the Zirthinnite actually do?" Rhak questioned.
"I meen, what is it used to. What do you do with it?"

It appeared that neither Kwa nor Dagon had an answer to this question, and so after a few moments silence Governor Dier pitched in:

"I can hardly claim to be an expert on the subject — as a politician my main concern is simply that the stuff is overwhelmingly valuable — but my acquaintance in Research and Development, the very same who so graciously donated you that stock of ETR's, has been known to get very excited about it."

The governor cleared his throat before continuing: "I am given to understand that it can be manufactured into a spectacularly durable material, making it highly useful in arms manufacture, but that it has further properties still under close scrutiny by the scientific community. For example, I am informed that those handy medical devices the city loaned you each contain a small amount of Zirthinnite. How this works, or how it ties into the events currently unfolding, is something quite above me at this point, I'm afraid."

Grey caught one of the mechs mid-jump and slashed its head off, he was still completely stationary, but he was still able to defend himself, he was situated between a desk and the wall, blocking gunfire from the horde of security mechs, and giving him enough breathing room to deal with the fast movers. He then noticed that the vast majority of the mechs were no longer present, and all of the rangers seemed to have bugged out too.

He was alone, with about 7 other mechs still firing on his position. He turned on his comm and hid behind the desk.

"Hey! Where did you guys go? I'm all alone in here, and if you didn't notice, I'm completely imobil-"

A series of shots hammered Grey in the chest.

----

The drone was becoming increasingly desperate, as the horde that was intended to crush any hostiles quickly dwindled, it noticed that the Rangers were falling back to the staircase, it sent the bulk of the horde after them. But the drone had a set range of which it could operate and command the mechs, as the Rangers quickly left its command radius, the mechs began powering down automatically. The drone knew it had no hope of taking down the main group. So it would settle for killing one of them.

It targeted Grey, and activated one last turret, positioned on the ceiling of the floor, and directly overlooking Grey's position. The second it saw Grey take hits from the turret, it sent two mechs to Grey's position finish the job.

Chalen and Bianca just made it to safety and allowed themselves a rest. Both of them had been a bit un-prepared then they orginally thought. Chalen's armor is almost bashed up completly and Bianca half lied about being able to fight well when in fact she was still struggling with the bad shoulder pain. Such great NR members they turned out to be. Chalen started up a conversation to Bianca how they both handle their personal challenge. The results are a tie. It didn't matter though as the two of them had fun telling their best mech kill. Chalen says his best one had to be when he barrelled into the mech upon saving Flank as Bianca's is taking out two mechs at the same time thus saving Grey.

Speaking of Grey...where the blazes is he? Bianca took a quick glance at the group who were in deep conversation with Governor Dier. Grey was not there among the group.
---
Chalen heard only bits to the conversation, mostly about how an armed to the teeth battle ship Kingdom could have done the job instead of sending NR to this suicide mission. A word that got him curious was Zirthinnite, the same substance used in medi packs. Yet he wonderd how this Zirthinnite stuff orginated from..

((I'm not gonna wait around for you Hutch, catch up quick if you wanna be in on this thing. ))

In good time, and after no small effort, the Rangers found themselves at the top of the staircase, standing before a set of double doors above which were set the words: "ORBITAL COMMUNICATIONS HUB: AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY." Whatever defences this top level of the building had once hosted appeared to have been deactivated or destroyed. The door did not appear to be locked.

Kwa loosened her blade in its sheath on her back, while Dagon drew his rifle and glanced around at the group, addressing them in hushed tones:

"Alright people, how do we want to play this?"

Bor shrugged. "Rush in and take them by surprise? A stun grenade or something would be helpful, as long as they don't have more mechs."

Flank rolled his shoulders, his cannon shifting with them. He had long since chambered a bullet, and he was practically dying to put it through the head of the transgressor. He did feel a little guilty about Grey; he was on his way to help him when he was attacked by several scout mechs, and he left him there in a locked up suit. So Flank resolved to put an end to the one behind those double doors, at least in part to avenge Grey.

"I don't have any stealth, use of my jet boots or my close-up electric attack," Flank said, "so all I really have is my cannon and my bare hands for hurting things. We don't even know how many people there are in this room, or if there are any more defences pointed at the door."

He gestured at Bor. "A stun grenade would do nicely, if we have any. Anything that takes the heat off would be great, because it looks like we can only go through the front door here."

"Let's do a clean takedown. Set up two guys at the door edges and one opening it. We'll go in fan out and cover every bit of the place."
Rhak said.
"After throwing a stun grenade of course. And NO cannons! The governor didn't want a bomb to explode, so I bet a he wouldn't like a f*ck*ng artillery piece firing inside there."

Flank could hardly argue with something like that. Hardly.
"Well, I did have a convenient rifle, but it looks like I'll be the one bringing out the lemonade after everyone's had their fun. But fair enough, anything I fire would probably break through the walls. That leaves me with only my bare hands. If, while you're fanning out, I can duck behind you, I can get close enough to someone so I can tackle them. Sound good?"