Nerrone's Rangers IC

((Hutch, I think you mean stick with the former))

Flank groaned inwardly as he heaved a massive breath into his lungs. He hadn't had much time to rest before Bor's voice sounded through his helmet: "Flank, if you can hear me, we need you to get the Lacuna up here. Try to fly behind the tower as much as you can; that way the strike cruiser won't be able to hit you."

He pressed a hand to the side of his helmet. "I'm... on it..."
He rolled over onto his front. Through his cannon's scope, with a black cross-hair floating in front of him, Flank could see Grey. He was in a foetal position, clutching his leg. Flank remembered hearing something snap as he tumbled to a standstill, but he assumed it was rubble. Now, he was sure that Grey had broken his leg.

He heaved himself to his feet and ran over to where Grey lay silently. He wasn't moving any time soon. He ran to the Lacuna instead and bolted straight up the landing ramp. There was absolutely no difference in the layout of the interior from when he last left it about twelve minutes ago, as long as it had taken him to reach the top of the tower, witness the fabrication of a new incarnation of destructive potential, and get shot out of the tower again.

He tossed the knives in his hand onto the sofa and made his way up to the cockpit. He sat down in the pilot's seat, irritated by the sensation of sitting on the bin-sized lump of metal that was his tail, and started up the ship. He had experience flying his small, nimble Narcon V2 craft and his massive, stubborn warship, the Thunder Child — that is, before he crashed it into an enemy warship — so the Lacuna was the Goldilocks of the two, in size, mobility and complexity of controls. Either way, Flank got the ship a few metres in the air and shifted it over to where Grey was. He lined the landing ramp up with his position and landed the ship.

Flank ran out of the landing ramp to where Grey lay. Flank grabbed him under the arms and, with agonising slowness, heaved the wounded Renkata into the living room.

Flank took the knives off the sofa and put Grey onto it. To make sure they would not wind up being a hazard, he quickly tossed them into the room he used to keep his things. "Just make sure you don't fall off." Flank told Grey as he got the Lacuna into the air again. Like Bor suggested, he strafed the building until it was between him and the Sword, and then began rising to the top where Rhak, Kwa, Dagon, Bor, Xol, Gresch, Chalen and Bianca all waited.

Inside the command hub of Sapphire Point, the remaining rangers would have been confused to hear a ship's backing tone coming from somewhere inside the left half of the room. That curiosity was resolved, however, when the tail end of the Lacuna backed into the other opaque window and shattered it. The landing ramp opened.

((I would take control of my own character, thank you Potato ))
Rhak had for a minute lost his consciousness and mind. He swam through a dark world, with skyscrapers turned around and floating turfs.
The floating, swimming objects, things together formed a face. A face which grinned against the Acheen.
"Did you really think you would make it? You've been dead longer than you think. Before the life of a merc. Before this group. You are nothing."
Nothing...
The word echoed around in Rhak's skull as he woke up. Immediatly a familiar pain greeted him.
His left arm had been pierced by some debris and let the poisonous air into his system. The arms lock-down protocol didn't work. The oxygen already tried to take Rhak back to the dark world.
"Have to... To..." Rhak's thoughts were slow like if they travelled through jelly. He coughed.
"Have to... Amputate..." Rhak said unknowingly out loud. He noticed he still had the moonblade. He grabbed it and started to cut of his arm. The dizziness and the oxygen damped the pain, as the moonblade slowly cut through his shoulder. Blood sprouted everywhere, making the hold of the moonblade hard as the grip became slippery of his fluids.
The arm finally came of and the suit isolated itself, stopping the intoxication. Rhak lay back and looked at the cieling or what was left of it.

Bianca saw Sword turning again for a better angle of an attempted attack. There was no way everyone might brace themselves for another strike. Unless some action is taken, they were finished. Flank had just tumbled from the sky after rescuing Rhak. The guy seemed to be in sheer loads of pain but was okay. Bianca activated her com link.

"Flank are you alright?! That fall you took must have been serious! How's Rhak holding up?"

-----

The Space Sprite made it just in time...only to see a cruiser readining itself for another attack. He had no idea what happend the first time but he ani't letting a second something unleashed. He quickly tapped his comlink.

"Tis everyone okay? Sorry I late something held me back. Anyone got a plan of sort?!"

Kwa stood before the terminal, squinting through the haze that her eyesight had become.

Probably a concussion.

She could barely make out a word on the screen, just infuriating smudges of black on white. A wave of sheer agony lanced through her useless left arm.

Broken shoulder.

She staggered backwards, hissing through clenched teeth, barely even aware of her surroundings, just the computer terminal in front of her.

Tunnel vision.

"...Someone!" She gesticulated wildly at the screen with her one usable arm, almost doubled over in pain.

"Forget the console!" Bor snapped. "We have to get out of here before that cruiser lights us up again!" He grabbed Kwa's arm and began dragging her towards the Lacuna's landing ramp.

((I am to assume, Isak, that Rhak did not accompany Flank to safety?))

Flank bounded out of the ship and saw, among other things, Dagon laying still on one of the terminals and Rhak with a missing limb. As he rushed over to help him up, he called out:
"Xol, Gresch, go help Dagon into the ship! I'll be there in a moment!"

He scooped Rhak up, along with his severed arm, and ran back into the ship. He deposited him on the dining table and ran back out, this time to collect his ammo box — which thankfully did not claim the lives of those who remained in the tower by exploding — and the few weapons that were scattered around Rhak: the rifle, the moonblade, and the throwing knife bandolier. He dumped them back on the ship and came back out to help the Selthem and the O'onthos carry Dagon back into the Lacuna's living room. At the same time, Bianca and Chalen were running into the ship.

There were two left: Kwa and Bor. Bor was trying to pull Kwa onto the ship, but the Mallium was resisting with what strength she had left. While Flank could see the logic in getting away, he also knew that only the worst kind of person would leave a city in the hands on an orbital weapon.

"Just go!" he called out to the two, "I'll handle it!" He ran past both, wishing that he could be sure he would get back alive, and came to the screen where he had entered the false and correct passwords. It had been — what, years? — since he had seen the interface of an orbital weapon, so things were slow to come to speed. But nevertheless, the variables became familiar very soon.

He worked furiously, trying to devise a deactivation sequence that would attack the cruiser briefly before ceasing to fire. First, he had to set up an algorithm that would cause the orbital weapon to change its bearing ever so slightly, so that it struck the Sword of Damocles. That required information as to what was north and what bearing the Sword was from the weapon. Then, he wrote the deactivation algorithm, which wasn't much harder than powering down.

This took about two, precious minutes. He rammed the enter key, grabbed Azure's visor, for whatever reason drove him to, and dashed back to the ship, not even pausing to glance at the Rangers around him. He bolted straight into the cockpit and started up the Lacuna.

Kwa allowed herself to be escorted back aboard the Lacuna as Flank took over at the terminal. Dagon, meanwhile, remained completely unresponsive.

It was only as Flank turned to board the ship that the Sword made its move: descending to the proper angle and pin-pointing a target through two windows in a tower some distance away had made the aiming process relatively time consuming, but the gunners knew their game. Their enemy was a sitting duck.

The Lacuna, to put it lightly, was far from in good shape: in the space of 24 hours it had been shot at, collided with a floating city and crash-landed into the wastes of Ariid. Field repairs, duct tape and prayers had kept it together for the flight back to Frerraro. The Sword now unleashed another devastating bolt with pinpoint accuracy, directly at the wounded hull of the Rangers' ship. Once again, green fire bloomed and the roar of the shell's impact deafened all in earshot.

The Lacuna was completely unharmed.

The bolt had hit something in mid-air... A something shaped roughly like a rather familiar Coalition transport.

Flank heard the explosion through the living room of the Lacuna, which reminded him to close the landing ramp. Knowing that the chances of dodging the proverbial bullet while sitting still were somewhere between midget height and below sea level, he jammed a foot on the accelerator and sent the ship screaming away from the tower. He descended, keeping behind the tower, so that the Sword would not be able to get a line of sight on them.

He couldn't even speak through the tension, and he gripped the flight stick so hard his knuckles had turned a bare white. The Lacuna was definitely not in flying shape, but it was faster than the Sword, owing to its relatively small size and mass. Everything was on him: all that the Rangers had tried and done would be worthless if he couldn't get them all to safety.

He kept descending for two reasons. Firstly, it would be easier to avoid the Sword if they weren't in the open air with nothing to hide behind. Secondly, gravity's assistance was keeping things easy on the thrusters. He was coasting down to the city.

The Lacuna suffered no further attacks on its descent: apparently the Sword's main batteries were currently the only weapons it had with sufficient range to harm the fleeing ship, but the small target's swift motion made scoring a hit with such unwieldy weapons impossible.

The bone in Grey's left leg had broken straight across the middle, no fragments or smaller chunks of bone. However, the top half of his bone had jut out to the left of his leg, splitting flesh and nerve endings, which was causing a large amount of the pain. But as the bone began cutting deeper into the flesh around his leg, it eventually hit a pouch of sorts in his body. It contained a potent mixture of adrenaline, and a type of natural painkiller. Grey's species had evolved with several of these around their body, allowing them to shrug off pain and fight or run if they were being attacked by one of the many predators that plagued the Renkata Homeworld. This potent mixture quickly began flowing into Grey's blood stream. It was if he was injected with pure caffine. He shot straight up from sofa, feeling much better and having a strange urge to run or kill something. Grey knew he had half an hour before the pain would return, so he wasted no time in working to get his bone halves re-allinged so his suit could mend them together. It wouldn't be easy. He placed his hand on the skin just over where his bone was jutting out, and began pushing it back into place. He only felt a dull ache, but he could hear the wet, loud sounds of his bone interacting with the surrounding flesh. After a few minutes of fiddling around, he finally re-allinged the two halves of his bone. He activated his suit's medical suite, and had it re-mend the bone. It didn't require much energy from the suit, so he could focus on fixing other people up as the robotic stem cells in his leg bonded with the bone marrow and began linking the two halves of the bone back together. He directed his attention to everyone else in the room.

"Now, I'm on a massive adrenaline and painkiller high, and I've got about 25 minutes before I'm back to wollowing around in pain. Who is in the most dire need for medical treatment? I'll start there and work my way down."

Flank called back to Grey: "Rhak severed his own arm. I picked it up, but if you can't reattach it, we can regrow it with an ETR. We have one left. They're like get out of hospital free tickets that heal you up instantly."
He paused for breath. "All I need is... is... some more... blood."
He slumped over in the pilot seat. He needed more fluids to keep him from dropping off the seat. He called for Xol to take the wheel while he got something to sustain himself. Another jug of water from the fridge went down, along with a few strips of sun-dried meat that were going stale in the back corner of the quick-chill compartment. While he ate, he looked around at the Rangers. Not a good sight for someone who had cast his lot with them.

Dagon wasn't moving, for whatever reason, Rhak was lying on the table without an arm, Grey still had liquid silver blood ebbing down his abdomen, Kwa's shoulder was broken, and everybody else was totally exhausted from their plight. Flank's wing hadn't bled any further, thanks to the clotting agent he swallowed, but he still had to stitch it up. His stab would was neatly bandaged and wasn't serving as an optional exit for his bodily fluids.

Scattered around the floor was their equipment, medical supplies littered the floor, Flank's ammo box lay tilted next to a wall, his rifle had rolled under the sofa, Azure's knives and visor were sitting shyly on the table next to Rhak, a moonblade served as a potential trip hazard, and almost all of the furniture had been inspired by Alice in Wonderland and had changed places, owing to the movement of the ship.

The ship itself was a wreck, almost literally, but it was scuttling along. The only problem was; where would they go? Both cities were either sent praying to the ground or attacked by a strike cruiser. There was no way the ship would last in a vacuum, so the only place left for them to make any sort of repairs would be on the empty ground, where no one would find them.

He thanked Xol and took control of the ship again. He flew it straight away from the city, putting as much distance between them and Santa Ferraro, flying closer to the ground, picking out a small cluster of mountains on the near horizon.

Rhak saw only shadows, and didn't want to move. He only thought on how he had squandered his life with revenge. He was already dead.
The pulse lied, the breathing lied. Everything lied about him being alive.
Biip... Dead... Biip... Dead...
The face of the dark world reminded itself. Grinning it repeated its words; "You are nothing."
"Amsora..." Rhak mumbled. "You... killed..."

The Lacuna set down in the foothills of a mountain range overlooking Santa Frerraro: From their new, more distant vantage point they could see the beam boring into the city, just as it had been less than a minute ago when they made their escape, and in front of it the black shape of the Sword of Damocles.

In addition to the services provided by Grey's medical suite, Kwa set about distributing the Lacuna's own meagre supply of bandages and pain killers. They would have to restock on them soon.

When turned onto his back, the source of Dagon's severe injury became obvious: a large piece of sharpened metal shrapnel, possibly as much as four inches long, was protruding from between his eyes. His life-signs were low, but he still lived.

"We could find ourselves a black market somewhere around here, chances are I know someone in charge who would give us a discount. We need to restock on weapons and ammo anyway, not sure where we could find a mechanic to fix this thing up, though." Grey said. He looked around the living room and decided that Rhak and Dagon needed medical attention first. He looked over to Rhaks arm, which was sitting prominently next to Rhak, who was shaking in the corner, muttering to himself.

"Okay... That's kind of scary. But I guess I could mend the flesh and bone, but his nerves will need to grow back by themselves, it could take him a day or two for them to come back, assuming I give him something to accelerate cell growth." Grey looked over to Dagon, and saw something coming from his back, when he moved him over, he saw a giant piece of metal sticking out of his back.

"Uhhh. I can't do anything about this. The best I can do is remove the metal and stop the bleeding, It would take two hours for my suit's stem cells to turn themselves into a suitable replacements that his system wouldn't reject, and I don't have that time. Nor does he, I believe." Grey said solemnly. He decided to start with Dagon. he grabbed the metal and began slowly removing it, being careful only to pull it along the entry wound. The pain Dagon must have been feeling would be enormous. Eventually, Grey dislodged the entire piece of metal and threw it to the ground.

"Now, can someone hand me one of those ETRs you're talking about and tell me how to use it? Dagon's going to need it."

((The shrapnel was lodged in his head.))

Kwa dragged over the last ETR.

"Press his hand against the pad on the top," she said, "It should do the rest."

Grey lugged the heavy white box over to Dagon and grabbed his hand.

"Well, here goes nothing."

He placed Dagon's hand on the top of the ETR.

The usual light-show followed the ETR's activation, lighting the interior briefly in a green glow. When it receded, Dagon was still unconscious, but his life-signs were stable. The wound in his head, as well as his other superficial cuts and bruises, had closed seamlessly.

"...I don't think there's much more we can do for him here." Kwa said, frowning.

Dark_potato57 wrote:

At the same time, Bianca and Chalen were running into the ship. .

Chalen did not look back at the Sword during his *heroic* run back to the Lacuna. Somehow his Elvar friend was going at a much slower pace. For a moment he feared for Bianca. She saw him but gave him the a-okay smile as if she was having fun running away from cruiser ships.

"Come on Chalen we can make it!"

That's when Chalen's friend used her lightning speed powers, getting slightly ahead of him. The pair just made it as the Lacuna's engines roared and began to take off. Mission accomplisehed! But to Chalen personaly, he didn't think the mission went all to plan.

Oh well. Not like we completly screwed up.

Bianca suggested that they should find the rest of the NR members who should be on the Lacuna as well.

Making to step outside for a breath of air, her arm now cradled in a makeshift sling, Kwa froze. Something in the background noise around her had changed. It wasn't the ship. It had already powered down. Not the voices of the other Rangers either. She couldn't have been the only one to notice it. A small piece of the soundscape — a low, distant, rumbling tone — had suddenly ceased.

She stepped down the landing pad, taking a few steps out onto the hilltop on which the Lacuna now perched, and squinted at the city on the horizon. She took a moment to confirm what she saw, raising one hand against the glare of the sun overhead, before reacting.

The beam was gone. Santa Frerraro was intact.

Flank exhaled as he turned off the Lacuna's engines. They were safe, at least for a few hours, and that was longer than any brief respite he had had in their company. Both of his robotic viewpoints flickered and faded briefly into semi-static, telling him that the final ETR was being used. He got up and walked into the living room, just in time to see the ETR collapse into pieces beneath Dagon's hand. Next to him was a very long shard of metal. So that's what was ailing him.

He started picking up his things. His ammo box he figured he should put somewhere safe first, so he picked it up and and put it in his room, but before he left, he loaded his cannon's clip with mortars; he hadn't had a chance to use them yet. He went back and did the same for Azure's visor — that he considered a great souvenir — and the rifle that Rhak may not be able to use again. He took the two throwing knives from Rhak, put them back in the bandolier and put that on him instead. If he was going to have only one arm, he should at least have a decent supply of one-handed weapons. As for the moonblade, well, he really didn't know what to do with it. Perhaps Kwa would want it, in case her own got broken. He just put it in his room, the armoury it was becoming.

He went back to Rhak, next to whom Grey stood, and noticed just how badly his arm had decayed already. He had no idea that the Acheen found oxygen poisonous.
"What the hell is happening to this guy's arm..?" he asked quietly, bewildered by the blistering skin and paling blood. He stood up and talked to Grey. "I know a guy who lost a load of limbs, but replaced them with metal ones. Maybe I should give Rhak his number."

Without waiting a response, he went to his room again, pulled a notepad and pencil out of his backpack, and scribbled Maarucye's number on it, along with the words: 'Missing limbs. Call.' He tore the page out, went back to Rhak and tucked the note into the bandolier. He turned back to Grey.
"I suppose now is the best time to talk about what happened in Sapphire Point. Yeah, I should have hauled you out of there, but... well, that's it. I should have pulled you out of there."

Great, another species that's completely intolerant to the surrounding atmosphere. They're such a pain to care for. Grey thought to himself, there was nothing he could do with Rhak but help prevent any further infection. Aside from him, everyone seemed to have been in okay condition, except for Kwa. He would need to get to her later, right now he needed to speed up the re-mending process for his leg, just in case the natural painkillers in his system loose their effect and reduce him to a withering wreck again, he turned to Flank, and gestured over to the Sofa one more. He limped over to it, and took a seat, and let his suit lock up to speed up the re-mending process.

"Yeah, that wasn't really a smart move, leaving the guy who just saved your ass to fend off a couple of bloodthirsty mechs. But I doubt you knew that my suit locks up when I'm doing a complex operation like that, just make sure this doesn't happen again. I'll have your back if you'll have mine. Can you promise me that?"

Conversation aboard the Lacuna was interrupted as Kwa's voice broke over the comms:

"This is Kwa, I'm outside. Look at the city."


On the hilltop, Kwa struggled to check her own tension as she strained her eyes, focusing on the horizon, waiting for something to happen. Seconds dragged by, and the view remained as it had been — city and cruiser keeping their positions above the endless wasteland. She sighed.

...That's it then. The beam reached the drive-core. Just a matter of time until—

What happened next was as visible to Kwa as it was to anyone looking through the portholes in the living area or the ragged breaches in the Lacuna's hull.

A column of yellow flame, a singular ray like lightning braided into twine, descended from the sky. Frerarro's orbital beam cannon no longer found its mark in the city below. The Sword of Damocles, its black gun batteries glinting in the sun, bathed in the fury of the weapon its masters had sought to control.


A moment later, the sound reached the hilltop.

"Wow," Bor uttered as he glanced out the window towards Santa Frerraro. "I was not expecting that to work. Nice job, Flank."

Entering the cockpit, he checked the scanners to see if the Kingdom had any other ships or satellites in orbit.

Flank nodded. "Yeah, I promise that. Now get well soon before you die."
"This is Kwa, I'm outside. Look at the city."
"What..?" Flank took a second to comprehend what might have been happening, but once he did, he bolted straight out the back end of the Lacuna. He was just in time to see a savage, malevolent ray of yellow flare down from the sky and hit the Sword of Damocles. If Flank had any body parts that were capable of grinning, they would have been cramping at that very moment. His algorithm worked!

Then the sound came. Sometimes, on Cortyax, the ash storms would cause pseudo lightning storms by way of friction. Because the scale of the ash clouds, the thunder was always monstrous in magnitude. It always sounded like the sky was being torn apart. That was what the sound of the orbital weapon striking the Sword was like for Flank. A crackling boom that made the ground shake beneath his boots.

Rhak had finally come out from his frenzy. His shoulder had healed well, as the leg wound. His chest still felt a damp pain, but it seemed alright.
Rhak tried to get up, but found it hard with the lack of one arm. When he finally got up, the sound hit him.
Rhak fell backwards, swearing in the progress.