2022-05-21: The Only Winning Move
- Log: The Only Winning Move
- Cast: Riika Sheder, Carina Cameron, Ruri Hoshino, Rena Lancaster, Shinji Ikari, Liam 7-020, Alexis Kerib
- Where: Ptolemaeus Lunar Base
- OOC - IC Date: 2022-05-21
- Summary: Riika Sheder releases Mecha Trembulor on a Lunar facility. Things go wrong.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
PREVIOUSLY
Things weren't going right for Riika Sheder.
She'd been so sure - *so* sure! - that bringing a kaiju to Africa would have helped. It hadn't. Certainly it had engaged in the battle, and it hadn't done badly. It had done about as well as a squad of mobile suits, but it hadn't won the battle and it wasn't going to win the war. She couldn't protect people that way.
And privately her life hadn't been going well either. Riika felt trapped on Earth, somewhere that was stressful because she had no friends or allies beyond the PLANTs citizens she'd come with. The horizon was too far away (it didn't make her dizzy like some of ZAFT's finest, but that didn't mean she was entirely comfortable with it) and there was just too much weather.
Worse, she couldn't talk to people, or tell them where she was from. Half the people she met either were scared of or hated Coordinators, and everyone knew she was an invader (or would if she said anything about herself). Even going to the concert hadn't helped, really. She wanted to shout the truth: All she wanted was for PLANTs to be safe, and she did not want to fight. But nobody was listening. She'd reached out twice and it hadn't gone well either time.
The anniversary of Junius Seven had come and gone and it had convinced her to do something she never would have done otherwise. She had fought to make sure there wouldn't be another one.
Now she had the opportunity, thanks to a mysterious seijin...
NOW
Ptolemaeus Lunar Base is a Federation facility built into a crater.
It is actually misnamed. Ptolemaeus is an enormous crater - a hundred fifty kilometers across - and Ptolemaeus Lunar Base couldn't possibly fill it; the facility is actually built into a much smaller crater inside the larger crater, Ammonius. From above, Ammonius looks like a tiny pock in the massive field of Ptolemaeus, though it's still a crater ten kilometers across.
Ptolemaeus Lunar Base is a shipyard and staging ground for Federation battleships. Ships come here to be repaired and remodeled, or in shorter trips to restock, to load on weapons and mobile suits. If that's all it was it would be significant but not critical, but there's an additional wrinkle: some of the weapons the Federation keeps here are nuclear, designed to crack asteroids... or for other purposes. It isn't well-advertised, but especially after Junius Seven, it isn't a secret kept beyond the reach of military intelligence either.
And right now, Ptolemaeus is under attack and it isn't fighting back.
There is a kaiju on the base grounds itself. It's not a kaiju anyone has ever seen before, somewhere between mechanical and biological (or at least as biological as kaiju get). Reptilian, it stands on its back legs, and it has horns and a row of spikes down its upper back - but the horns and the spikes are all metal, looking more like equipment than body parts. It has a 'shell', but the shell is metal. It has two cannons growing out of its body, what look like vents in its chest, andits tail ends in a metal spike that might be a modified power plug. The whole thing is a bit over seventy meters tall. It's big.
The cannons and spikes on the kaiju are glowing, crackling with electricity arcing from one point to the next, and there's a reason for that.
All across Ptolemaeus, power generation and transmission is failing. The base generators are offline, though the emergency backup systems that keep the life support running are still working for now. Inside the base, people cannot get to where they need to be, because the doors and hatches and airlock systems and elevators don't work reliably; sometimes one activates for a few seconds, a half-minute, before losing power again. None of the turrets are working except in fits and starts. Long-range scanners are showing mostly weird interference patterns. The ships in the docks are in similar straits.
From above, the base looks dark. It should never look dark. It sounds dark, too. The last transmission anyone got clearly was a request for aid as the kaiju slowly lumbered toward the base.
A defense squad was mobilized to defend it... but the first wave just failed. Most of the mobile suits' Minovsky engines simply refused to start, or didn't provide enough power to do anything useful. One lucky mobile suit team actually both activated their engines and approached but shut down as they got closer to the kaiju, visible as deactivated lumps, also dark.
The kaiju moves slowly. It isn't in a hurry and its legs are stiff, though it at least has *big* steps due to its size. But it is progressing inevitably toward the 'special-use weapons storage' - the tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, and quite possibly some other things the Federation isn't talking about and would prefer you not look at. Those are underground, but have a vertical shaft leading to them, which the kaiju is walking in an almost perfectly straight line towards.
One vehicle, improbably, is still operating just fine. A small civilian shuttle with hover capability, which is currently well above the kaiju and a ways back but within visual range. Normally the base would have shot it down or at least seized it, but, well. There are complications.
The vehicle sent one message, earlier: "Please stand down. Nobody needs to get hurt." This went about as well as telling any military facility not to defend itself could be expected to. If any other messages were sent, the depowered Ptolemaeus hasn't been able to tell anyone about them.
<Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
Far above the regolith, there's a flicker of deceleration thrust.
"This is not what I thought we would run into at our next maintenance layover," Captain Carina Cameron murmurs as HMS Havant's sensors light up with indicators it's not used to seeing. The ship has seen action mainly against conventional enemies. Kaiju are, while not new, an unusual sight on the vessel's usual rounds - and then usually only in the Earth's gravitational field.
One showing up on the Moon is bizarre. Carina pushes her glasses up her nose and scowls through the flock of data readings flooding across the Havant's large tactical viewer. More is bothering her than the giant monster.
The darkness is what's really a problem. There's no resistance. "Can you raise the outpost?" she asks with a cant of her head towards the crew.
"Negative," reports Lieutenant Stockton from the tactical station, hiding a flicker of bafflement behind professional focus and well-practiced noblesse. "We actually have almost no power readings at all. Even the lights are off. I can't tell if life support's up."
"They must be projecting some sort of dampening field," Commander Arlynn Reeve muses, stepping up to one side of Carina. The older woman looks at the young captain with eyebrows arched. "We pulled one transmission from long range. Just a warning to the base crew to stand down."
Carina snaps her fingers. "Right. Send word to the engine room: Auxiliary generators on hot standby just in case. See if you can ID the source of the transmission."
A flurry of activity later, Stockton comes back with a report: "It's hard to tell, sir, but we have one other active energy signal. It's a hover shuttle."
"Make and model?"
"Um. Not an Earth one. Looks like maybe one of the Zimmad-based ones?"
"So then we're dealing with tube trash. Got it." Carina plants both hands on her hips with a scowl even as the horizon fills more and more of the Havant's viewport, the ship descending steadily towards the base. "Let's see how far this power problem extends. Get a couple of Gloucesters on approach. Tell them to be ready to bail if it goes bad."
The Havant herself settles into a low hover at the edge of the battlefield. She doesn't fire, but a concealed hangar in her ventral hull slides open and a pair of pods drop free, each releasing a single colony-use Gloucester. The cramped little Knightmare Frames drop down to the crater surface and begin to skate in towards the lumbering kaiju.
It won't take long before they're close enough to fire. But there's time. Time for the unexpected to happen.
Carina watches her rangefinder intently, counting down metres as the Gloucesters make moonfall.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Nergal is on friendly terms with the Federation -- friendly enough to make some deliveries to Ptolemaeus Lunar Base, in any case. This delivery may, in fact, be children from NERV! (... amongst other things.) One of Londo Bell's Squad Commanders is visiting to help out, too, something which just happened to go much more smoothly because this Commander just happens to be a friend of their littlest bridge crew.
But on their approach --
"Local power systems are draining, Captain," Ruri Hoshino, diminutive systems operator, reports.
"It seems they got a message asking them to stand down," Megumi Reinard, communications officer, adds, frowning in concern. "They said no one had to get hurt..."
"... the kaiju is moving towards weapons storage," their military advisor, Goat Hoary, says, with his typical stoicness. "If it reaches the special use weapons, there will be casualties."
A communication window -- a flat display which the Nadesico pops up in order to allow audio-visual communication -- pops up, with the chief engineer's face all but crowding through it. "You can't send my beautiful Aestis out in conditions like this!" Uribatake yells, clearly angry about the situation.
"Correct," Ruri confirms, at her console below the Captain's, at the pointing edge of the bridge. "The power fluctuations would affect our Gravity Wave Antenna, Captain."
"I see..." Yurika Misumaru, Captain of the Nadesico, says, clasping a hand to her chest. All a sudden, she points. "All right, then! We'll ask our guests to deploy!"
Ruri opens up her own communications window, to the pilot's lounge. "Nadesico pilots, please stand by. We would like to ask our visiting pilots to deploy against this kaiju. It appears to disrupt power sources, so we cannot support an entire Aestivalis wing."
(They might be able to help support an Eva, but only one.)
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
EARLIER
Rena Lancaster was on the Nadesico briefly -- and for out-of-the-ordinary reasons. A new unit was being transferred to Londo Bell: a prototype variable fighter, a YF-25 Prophecy that had been used to test the VF-25 Messiah. Now, the prototype is being given to Londo Bell for a pet project of Lieutenant Lancaster's.
She expected to fly it back to the Ra Mari, and that would be it. Instead, though, the warnings came: Nadesico was called up to deal with a sudden appearance of a kaiju. The Captain wanted the guest pilots to deploy.
"Eh...?"
So thus, in the ready room of the Nadesico, she stands in front of the YF-25. A sleek aircraft, orange and white, with the name "PROPHECY" stenciled down the fuselage. Rena frowned, helmet underneath her. She looked at one of the Nadesico's mechanics. "The OS has been loaded up?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"All right then."
NOW
The YF-25 shoots out of the Nadesico's catapult. It is a blue of orange and white, first, doing a sharp bank through lunar space. Distant sunlight gleams off the reflective canopy of the cockpit. Inside of it, Rena looks down at her cockpit. She sees the words come across the screen:
LANCASTER ADAPTIVE O.S.
VERSION 0.2.3
ALL SYSTEMS....... OK
Rena let out a sigh she didn't know she was holding in. Then, she looked up -- her eyes locked onto the massive kaiju ahead -- and she gripped the flight controls. Her brown eyes stared forward. "It's huge... but something about it feels..."
She quiets. She isn't sure, yet.
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji Ikari has been stuffed in what he has come to think of as his action uniform; his plugsuit with a NERV jacket wrapped round it for modesty's sake. He had been ordered to NERV's dinky little shuttle bay some five hours ago, and here he is, in orbit of one of the largest shipyards in the sphere. Unit-01 had been coming along, he was told, mostly to impress potential investors. This was all pretty normal.
Except for the commanding officer running the show. "Father." Shinji looked up at the impossibly tall, gaunt man as the two road the transport onto the Nadesco. Auras of palpable menace sort of wore down after five hours of watching the man chat up Nergal techs while he played a hand of poker and occasionally shook some suits hand.
Gendo Ikari turned to look at his son, raising a sculpted eyebrow. There was a moment of tension between the two men, both somehow aware this was somehow going badly without really knowing how, or what to do about it, or if they wanted to do anything about it. The tension was inexplicably thick, like when you leave peanut butter out overnight.
Shinji pushes on, impossibly. "Do you want a sandwich or something? Ibuki and I are going to do a quick coffee run."
Gendo Ikari looks down at his son, who somehow does not tremble. Maya Ibuki hands out coffee and pretends not to be watching. "Sure." The elder Ikari says, unbuttoning his top button. "Spicy chicken, if they've got it."
They do. Nergal, Shinji finds, doesn't skimp on the pickles. It's strange, feeling like a part of the team despite the fact that he knew, knew for a fact, his old man was furious with him for risking Unit-01 the way he did, and probably even more furious that he couldn't express that displeasure in front of people he wanted money from. Maybe it was just odd realizing the old man had a favorite kind of sandwich.
The ship shakes; Shinji somehow manages to avoid a pratfall. "What's going on?!"
"There's some kind of attack below!" Maya Ibuki has found a headset and a data tablet somewhere, bless her. "All of the defenses are out, there's been some kind of power fluctuation. Maybe a terrorist bombing? People are shouting about a monster-confirmed, Hoary just patched me through, this is some kind of energy draining kaiju."
The Nadesco asks for help. Commander Ikari rises from his seat like some awful bird of prey. "Acknowledged, Nadesco. This is Commander Ikari of NERV. We'll sortie our finest asset-after all, NERV is in the exclusive business of slaying monsters. Unit-01 is launching."
He doesn't have to make it sound like a sales pitch, Shinji thinks, as he's taken up the elevator and, with remarkable efficiency, dropped into the entry plug. "Are we cool?" Shinji whispers inside of the cockpit, as he feels the familiar, awful tingle of synchronization. He gets no answer.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
One of the visitors is here on a test flight. The Proto Helios wasn't tested in hard vacuum during its initial development--it's sealed, certainly, and has a handful of token safety features to protect the pilot in the event of a hull breach. Nevertheless, its armament and jets were designed with atmospheric sorties in mind; heat buildup is going to be a problem if it has to use both of them at once without atmosphere to provide heat dispersion. Liam petitioned Kaworu for a bit of cross-training with the Ra Mari to get some base performance specs. As it so happens, one of the Ra Mari's officers was already at Liam's sortie destination.
The Proto Helios docked with the Nadesico less than ten minutes ago, and rests in its hangar. It's warm, but simple maneuvers haven't truly stressed the cooling systems--Liam knows that will happen once he fires up the SUNBURST. He might as well be in his own little world right now, walking to the lounge after taking care of sanitary. He holds a large metal water bottle in one hand, and wears the same white jumpsuit he escaped in. He gets one good look at the lounge before the announcement comes through.
Liam stands bolt upright, head angled towards the source of the voice. A child? A shiver runs down his spine. Even here--?
The ship shakes. Liam reacts reflexively, bracing against the bulkhead and gripping a nearby handle with iron strength. A glance back into the cafe confirms no one is injured. People are shouting, though. 'Commander Ikari?'
There's another of those horrible surges of dread as he realizes that must be Shinji. His heart aches. But he has to be a weapon now, and a weapon can't bring comfort. He turns on a heel, and makes for the hangar with all due speed.
Now
Suitup is never pleasant. A pair of spinneret-like extrusion devices twist about him on long arms, spinning out a sheet of high-tensile nanofiber laden with more sensors per square centimeter than some entire Mobile Suits. Liam grits his teeth as the extrusion device makes it up past his waist, clenches his fists, and strains against it just to stay upright. It's a tangible relief when the device finally stops, and the fiber shifts into its intended shape: a Mobile Trace suit, armored and heat-resistant.
Liam picks up his new helmet, next, and snaps it into place; more arms swing out from behind him, bearing coolant tubules. They thread through specially-designed apertures in the back, completing the vacuum-seal before connecting with the ports on his neck.
At this point, Liam is champing at the bit; he reaches out a hand, and the radio flares to life, connecting to the local network. "Acknowledged, Nadesico," he says. "Pilot Seven-Dash-Zero-Two-Zero, prepared for deployment." Everything's sealed and green. The docking clamps release, and the Proto Helios stands upright, bearing its own weight. "Eva-01, Pilot Lancaster. Mission parameters acknowledged. Neutralize kaiju. EM defensive measures may be present."
The Proto Helios rockets towards the lunar surface, its jets blazing at its shoulders.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Silence on the moon is eerie and complete. The kaiju makes no sound in the vacuum; even its stomping tread doesn't transmit sound very well through the regolith into the underground parts of the base. Very little else is running. The base is muted from the outside, though there's plenty of noise *inside* from military personnel in a near panic, backed by the constant hum of life support on the Moon.
And along that background the kaiju just marches. At first it doesn't even seem to care about the ships that *do* manage to take off in its presence, or arrive late: the Nadesico, the Havant. Presumably it sees both but it doesn't do anything about them.
Above, the shuttle is clearly piloted by someone who knows how to stay out of trouble in a combat situation. It makes a quick evasion before realizing nobody is actually shooting it right now; after that it banks away from the Havant, recognizing it as a Britannian ship and thus Bad News.
And as for the Havant's deployment, they find very quickly that the aura is pretty big - especially when the kaiju notices you.
The proportionately small head of the mechanized kaiju swivels to look at the Glaucesters, and the things that look like cannons, or maybe turbines, on its shoulders whir to life, spinning slowly. A blue glow forms across the front of the kaiju, the pleasant colour of Cherenkov radiation.
And their batteries start to drain. Fast. It might not be to nothing, not immediately, but it's definitely fast enough to be a concern, fast enough to render their weapons less effective.
ENERGY DEVOURING MONSTER - MECHA TREMBULOR
Suddenly, a crackling transmission comes on. The voice is female - it's Riika, though most people here don't know her and even those that do might take a moment to figure it out. "Please, stand down. We're only here for one purpose. We're here to destroy the nuclear weapons kept in Ptolemaeus. I won't let them be used again. If you try to stop us - "
The kaiju roars.
Surprisingly, everybody can hear it, because it also emits an electromagnetic surge. Radios emit a rumbling noise, like a roar run through a bad microphone and coming down a bad wire; it crackles and sounds somewhere between a normal kaiju and a static discharge.
In her shuttle, Riika yanks the headphones away because that *hurt*. She picks up a moment later, as the kaiju begins a more aggressive energy drain, "We'll shut you down until we're gone."
The battleships are least affected. Larger, with bigger generators and more power to play with, they only have their energy dampened slightly. It's the smaller units that have more of a problem; start-ups are disrupted, systems flicker on and off and occasionally surge, drawing more power than they should with electrical sparks and pops. It won't take anyone out om the battlefield but it sure makes it a challenge to get there!
Please just go, Riika thinks to herself. She's a military officer; she has no problems with fighting. But this would be so much EASIER if they'd just listen.
KTS: Riika Sheder targets Carina Cameron with Prevent! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Ruri Hoshino with Prevent! KTS: Riika_Sheder Changes attack to Shinji Ikari, Liam 7-020, and Rena Lancaster with Energy Fluctuation. KTS: Riika Sheder prevents Carina Cameron's maneuvers, reducing her Skill drastically. KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 168. KTS: Riika Sheder prevents Ruri Hoshino's maneuvers, reducing her Skill drastically. KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 207. KTS: Rena Lancaster successfully evades Riika Sheder's Energy Fluctuation KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 246. KTS: Liam 7-020 charges into the attack! KTS: Liam 7-020 fails to react to Riika Sheder's Energy Fluctuation, taking 3999 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Riika Sheder's Disruptor activates, causing Jam L1! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 285.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Are you okay out here?" Rena asks Shinji, a note of worry in her voice. She isn't sure what an Evangelion's ratings are for space and low gravity environments. She hopes it will be okay.
Then, she hears Liam's voice -- and she nods her head. "I read you, Proto Helios pilot. Let's go get them."
She can feel the panic from the base's personnel. That leaves her worried -- and her eyes narrow, when Riika speaks. She can't really argue with destroying nuclear weapons. There's even a spike of panic at the idea of defending those--those things. But then the kaiju roars, even through space.
"I don't want to protect those things," she transmits back to Riika. The electromagnetic surge shoots towards them -- and she makes the Prophecy bank upward, sharply, over the wave of radiation. The fighter levels out, then. "But... I've got to protect the people in the base!"
Her thumb rests on the trigger. "Kakapo Leader, Fox Two!"
One of the clustered missiles on the wing hardpoints drops off -- the thruster fires, and it goes hurtling off towards the kaiju.
KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Riika Sheder with AIM-18L Interceptor Missile!
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
The purple-haired communications officer, Megumi -- she's actually a very popular voice actor! -- is the one who visibly recoils, when the electromagnetic surge pours in. She yelps, grasping at her ears, and the communication window flickers for a moment before she opens it again. She responds to Riika's hails an open channel and clear emotion, worried and angry. "Think about what you're saying! If you attack a nuclear weapons storage with a kaiju, everyone here is going to die!! Even you..!"
Ruri's gaze just narrows, slightly, as she presses her hands against her console. (Data streams through them, all reflected in the IFS tattoo on the back of her hand.) She can feel the disruption, of course -- feels everything, coursing through the Nadesico's veins, integrated with its systems as she is.
"The power disruption isn't constant," she reports, stoic, and it's a communication which their allies can hear just the same. She isn't wailing about the effects of Riika's assault, the way Megumi is. "Minor surge events... our Phase Transition Engines can handle it. The effects are likely to be more severe on smaller vessels. Now optimising. Transmitting data to receptive units..."
She opens a communication channel to the Proto Helios and the Prophecy A-type, and the advice she sends them isn't really designed for human eyes, really -- she reaches out to her allied craft, and offers them advice on how to optimise their power output to avoid the worst of the surges.
A similar machine-low transmission is offered to the Havant -- though this shares more of the Nadesico's initial assessment of the threat and how to manage the power fluctuations with a larger ship's power.
She does not reach out to Evangelion Unit-01.
... Kaworu warned her about trying to talk to the Evas.
KTS: Shinji Ikari fails to evade Riika Sheder's Energy Fluctuation, taking 3999 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 324. KTS: Ruri Hoshino targets Rena Lancaster, Carina Cameron, and Liam 7-020 with All-Out. KTS: Ruri Hoshino orders an all-out attack, raising Rena Lancaster's Skill! KTS: Ruri Hoshino orders an all-out attack, raising Carina Cameron's Skill! <Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
It is very quiet in space. The Colony Use Gloucesters skate towards the kaiju amidst a silence that's eerie even in a soundless vacuum.
The Gloucester pilots don't get very far. A transmission quickly crackles back - "We're getting some falloff, Havant," one of the pilots warns.
"Back off. We have the range now," Carina assures with a frown, folding her arms beneath the jut of her chest.
The Knightmare Frame pilots oblige, scooting away and back out of the kaiju's immediate field before their batteries completely drain off. They zip towards their landing pods for a recharge, out of the fight for now. Carina raises her arm and prepares an order - but before she can say anything, another transmission comes through.
Not a voice she recognizes. Carina presses her lips together and exhales through her nose. And then the lights flicker.
"It's extending the power drain outward," Stockton reports urgently from the tactical station. "I think it's a generalized field."
Carina snaps a look back. "Reactor status?"
"Fluctuating. We can manage, but the levels are unsteady."
"Tell the KMFs to stay out of it. And get a channel open to that hostile."
There's a flicker of comm static as the Havant links a signal back up to the shuttle. Carina's voice comes over, crisp and clear.
"Attention, spacenoid terrorist!" she immediately declares.
"This stands as notification that you have violated an Earth Federation facility with an obvious biological weapon," Carina continues, hand migrating to her hip as she draws herself up. The posture lends her voice an almost whipcrack-like bite. "We of the Britannian Union Spacy will not permit you to slaughter helpless members of the Joint Federal Forces with this bizarre crime against humanity you've manifested. Prepare for your bioweapon to be disabled and yourself to be taken into custody. This is not negotiable."
She promptly slashes her thumb across her throat; Stockton takes the cue and cuts the line, and Carina snaps her fingers a second later. "Launch 793 Squadron. High altitude tactics. use the trajectory uplink from that Nadesico if you have to. I want that thing turned into a bloody smear in the moon dust."
"Roger that," Commander Reeve rings back. Orders fly across the bridge. Signals cascade downwards quickly, and within seconds, a half-dozen variable fighters are taking to the stars. A flock of six VF-171s, typically blue-grey but for Britannian roundels and tail flashes, each with a small seal on the tail - the emblem of 793 Squadron, named for the City of Cornwallis.
The variable fighters speed... upwards. They try to lift clear of the energy dampening, coasting at high altitude and plotting courses over the kaiju - courses that will allow them to begin dropping dumb bombs, triangulated by computer.
The kaiju can shut down power systems. The Havant's air wing is dealing with the challenge through the simple expedient of standing off and trying to bunker-bust it into oblivion.
KTS: Carina Cameron targets Riika Sheder with Air Wing Ranged Tactics! KTS: Riika Sheder successfully Intercepts Rena Lancaster's AIM-18L Interceptor Missile KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Carina Cameron's Air Wing Ranged Tactics, taking 3960 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 57652
KTS: Ruri Hoshino orders an all-out attack, raising Liam 7-020's Skill!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Descending from orbit is always a tricky task, but automation helps. The Proto Helios' computer lights up a flight path, and Liam follows it, tensing and releasing his shoulders, thighs, and feet to operate the jets. Notably, this is not the biggest kaiju he's seen--that dubious honor still belongs to Jophiel--but his sturdy jaw sets in a frown as he sees just how big it is compared to the base.
A transmission crackles through. Liam glances at the radio, and Hephaestus' words echo in his ears.
'Every breath wasted on the enemy is one less keeping you alive.'
Intimidation was acceptable under certain circumstances--but could he intimidate someone who's gone to such drastic lengths?
The Proto Helios' flight path takes it through the edge of Mecha Trembulor's dampening field. The cockpit lights dim, and the glow of the panoramic display fades. "Primary reactor functional," the cyborg says, over the allied comm. "Observing drain across all systems! EVA-01, watch yourself, stay tethered at all costs--"
And then the field starts to grow more intense; a sluggishness settles into Liam's limbs, as the greedy beast sucks organic electrochemical power out of his cybernetics. The Gundam's jets sputter and fade, leaving it on a collision course with the lunar surface.
Liam snarls, and then the hideous ROAR echoes through his cockpit, like static in his ears. The Havant opens a transmission, and an upper-class Britannian accent gives an upper-class Britannian ultimatum. The faintest note of anger ignites in Liam's heart, quickly smothered by his directives--and by an influx of data pouring in from the Nadesico. The machine's systems feel... odd to Ruri, sophisticated but at the same time very thrown-together.
The Proto Helios throws itself into a tumbling roll. It hits the regolith hard, armor crunching with a shudder that runs through the cockpit--but Liam's low-G maneuver works, limiting the damage to one damaged pauldron and long gashes across the back. Could've been much worse. "Lightly damaged, Kakapo Lead," Liam says. "Engaging target, preparing to close." The cannons built into the Proto Helios' shoulders iris open. Ruri's fixes help keep the magnetic field stable enough to condense plasma into proper magnetic bottles. Liam sights downrange and opens fire, sending white-hot bursts of hydrogen at the kaiju.
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Riika Sheder with FACULA - Plasma Shot! <Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Shinji and his Unit-01 are.
One.
Just in time to pick up on the warning from the kaiju user below. She's trying to destroy the nukes? Shinji feels a flash of sympathy for the idea, though at the same time, without these weapons of last resort what happens when the latest alien threat gets serious?
"Feeling sympathy for the devil again, Third?" Gendo seems able to read Shinji's mind. "You have no reason to believe that terrorist is telling the truth; she's already been willing to put the entire facility at risk with her choice of weapon."
"I didn't say anything." Shinji says, hating how much of a sullen child he sounds. Other people are listening, it's embarrassing. "I know how easy those things can go out of control. It's just hard not to sympathize with wanting less ways for people to blow themselves up."
"You didn't have to say anything." Gendo says, realizes that sounds like he's insane or a father, and adjusts his glasses. "We'll run the thing past STOAGE's database. No energy eater's safe. Stay attached as long as you can."
"Roger." Shinji says like he's slamming a door, and switches to the pilot com. "Unit-01 here."
The great purple monster edges out of the Nadesco's launch bay, attached to the ship itself with three umbilical cables and a massive bungee cable for emergency deployment. "We're looking into what that thing might be capable of, but everyone please be careful. These things like to give-aah!" Shinji's body wracks as the monster sends a pulse of feedback at Unit-01, the great machine stumbling. Fortunately it's plugged into the Nadesco.
Unfortunately, an Eva's internal controls are so complicated, so delicate, Shinji finds himself choking for a second because the LCL recycler just outright malfunctions. Sympathy withering, Shinji pulls his trusty gatling cannon out of the giant box NERV stuffed it in, hoists it on his shoulder, and takes aim, firing a concentrated spray of superior NERV bullets. "Doing great. Another sunny day in the paramilitary science cult, being choked by walking refrigerator magnets."
KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Riika Sheder with Progressive Gatling Cannon Area Denial! KTS: Riika Sheder successfully avoids Liam 7-020's FACULA - Plasma Shot KTS: Invalid queue number. KTS: Riika Sheder successfully avoids Shinji Ikari's Progressive Gatling Cannon Area Denial KTS: Shinji Ikari: Will Barrier Activates.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
It's getting shot at that really rouses the kaiju to full anger. It lets out a second one of those static discharge roars (Riika has wisely not put the headphones back on and instead hung them around her neck) - and begins firing sparks of light from its horns, pellets of energy that blast out Rena's missile.
They do not blast out the flight wing's bombs - or, rather, they get one or two, but that's just too many for Mecha Trembulor to shoot out. The variable fighters being so high (and, with no atmosphere, it's not like they have trouble getting even higher) means they are unbothered at the moment.
It does mean that Mecha Trembulor is very active when Liam and Shinji fire. Liam manages to charge and fire Proto Helios' plasma gun, but the bolt starts to come apart almost immediately; Mecha Trembulor can't absorb the entire thing, but whatever it is doing to create the energy draining field is causing issues with the coherence of the plasma. It 'burns up' in flight, a too-bright shooting star that flickers and dies by the time it gets to Mecha Trembulor. It barely feels it through its plated shell.
It can do nothing of the sort with Shinji's real, physical bullets. Those it has to hunker down against, going low as it drops to all fours, the shell projecting upward. Bullets impact the heaviest parts of its plating, almost turtle-like. Mecha Trembulor doesn't even try to rise immediately afterwards, but 'walks' on all fours for several steps. It's no faster this way, but it's no slower either.
"I'm not here to kill myself or anyone else!" Riika has, hesitantly in case of another roar, replaced one of the earpieces of the headphones, leaving it cocked at an odd angle with one ear clear. Crime against humanity? "This isn't a crime against humanity. It's justice. But even if I was coming to fight them, I'm ZAFT, not a terrorist, and this is a military facility. This place - Ptolemaeus - this is where the ship that killed Junius Seven loaded. I'm here to do exactly one thing."
"I'm going to make sure there's never another Junius Seven. And if you're going to stop me with bullets..."
Riika's shuttle makes a complicated evasive maneuver, but being unarmed, it doesn't shoot. It doesn't need to be armed to tell Mecha Trembulor to fire, and fire it does. From its crouching position, its shell is up and ready, along with the horns on its head and upper back. Little shots, blobs of light and energy, emit in all directions like CIWS, trying to force Rena out of the sky; more focused shots aim at Shinji, close enough to fire bullets.
Liam, who is even closer, gets a surprise - one of the horns actually flies off, attached to the kaiju by a thick electrical cable. It lashes, striking at him and trying to smash the Proto Helios, retracting back into place with a snap.
It takes time to fire at the ships, but fire it does. Electricity builds up on the horns that remain in place, finally discharging a pair of white-blue bolts, one after another, at the two ships. On Earth it would be accompanied by deafening thunderclaps. Here, nobody can hear it unless they're struck by it.
Mecha Trembulor takes this opportunity to lever itself up and back onto two feet. It is getting close to the hatch it has been beelining for. It would fit, but the hatch is closed. Mecha Trembulor's response to that is to begin to charge up another glowing field, electricity arcing from point to point across the horns and shell.
KTS: Riika Sheder targets Carina Cameron with Thunder Horn! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Ruri Hoshino with Thunder Horn! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Shinji Ikari with Energy Bullet Shot! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Liam 7-020 with Horn Whip! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Rena Lancaster with Energy Bullet Barrage! KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Carina Cameron fails to evade Riika Sheder's Thunder Horn, taking 4725 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 207. KTS: Rena Lancaster fails to evade Riika Sheder's Energy Bullet Barrage, taking 5760 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 246. KTS: Shinji Ikari's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari blocks Riika Sheder's Energy Bullet Shot, taking 2310 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 285. KTS: Liam 7-020 parries Riika Sheder's Horn Whip, taking 1140 damage! KTS: Riika Sheder has engaged Liam 7-020 KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 324. KTS: Ruri Hoshino fails to evade Riika Sheder's Thunder Horn, taking 6300 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 363. Alexis_Kerib teleports in.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena's eyes glance down at her console. She tracks the information flooding her screen; it's something from the Nadesico. There are prompts across it -- she studies it for a second, before she reaches the conclusion: "Adjusting power output... right," she says.
She keeps an eye on the incoming Britannian forces. There is a little tension in her back, at that, as she sits up straighter. "I read you," she answers Liam. "Be careful going in. I'll be right behind you."
She makes a face, then, at Shinji's reply. She isn't sure what to do with that for a second. "Well... let's do the best we can, all right? One thing at a time, maybe we focus on the refrigerator magnets because that seems like it's something we can do something about here and now."
She sees her missile explode before it reaches the kaiju -- the missile shot through by a pellet of energy -- and grimaces, as she shoots in closer to Mecha Trembulor. Blasts of energy come firing out of it, raining down around her. The Prophecy goes into a tight barrel roll -- and it's clipped three times.
Vapor trails after it, in wide arcs under Luna's lesser gravity. Rena takes a deep breath, before she moves a control downward.
The YF-25A is forced out of the sky, but it's not out of control. Smoke trails from it, as the wings snap in -- the thrusters fall out, into two legs, and its arms unfold and snap into place. The Battroid's head comes up into place, and there is a glimmer across it as the pinpoint barrier system comes online.
It comes down, thrusters firing, and closes in on the kaiju. "I know you're not!" Rena answers Riika. "You're not trying to just hurt people! But... that's what's going to happen!"
The Battroid doesn't move the way most do. Its left arm shifts out to the side -- and it banks around accordingly, as smaller verniers fire to help it maneuver, even as the legs turn down. The right arm reaches for the forearm shield, which helps it turn more. Riika might recognize this, but it's not what a variable fighter usually does.
It's AMBAC movement.
It grips a handle mounted into the shield -- tears a cylinder free -- and a beam saber explodes off of it. The YF-25A soars in, and then slashes with the beam saber as it passes. A flash of pink, burning to red, cuts through space and then posssibly the kaiju, before the Prophecy slams down into the lunar regolith behind it.
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Alert Spirit Command. Rena Lancaster transforms to YF-25A Prophecy A-type (Battroid) <Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
The VFs sweep onwards upon releasing their bomb load, circling clear of the fray for the moment. Carina clicks her tongue as she looks out over the results. "So its field can't get that high," she murmurs. "Alright. That gives us a baseline."
As the mobile units move in, the blonde captain moves across the deck with a slight bounce, catching herself in mid-float with a hand on the edge of her command chair. She drops back into her seat and crosses a long leg over the other. Riika's reply comes over the radio, leaving Carina raising her chin a little and curling her lips.
"Do you know how often people like you try to justify yourselves?" she answers curtly. "Everyone believes they have the moral high ground - even the most brutal terrorists. Frankly, I don't care if you *think* you're justified, or what grudges you're trying to make right. And coming here under the flag of an illegitimate anti-Earth extremist party--"
The kaiju cuts her off in mid-monologue. "--I was talking!" Carina splutters before an arc of electricity pounds into the Havant's ventral hull. There is no thunderclap, but the big ship lurches sickeningly, the bow coming up alarmingly and nearly throwing half the crew off of their stations.
"Countersteering!" yelps Lieutenant Vieira at the helm. Thrusters along the Havant's hull burn, two on the ventral surface pulsing heavily to push the nose back to a level base. Another reaction-control thruster kicks in to complete the rebalancing. The ship does not crash, but there is a large, smoking gash burned into its ventral armour, dangerously close to the hangar bay door.
Carina winces before snapping her fingers. Stockton reopens the commline.
"--an illegitimate anti-Earth extremist party," Carina continues as if her monologue had never been interrupted, "with a sickening bigoted ideology. You not only think you're superior to us physically, but morally, and that snobbery will not serve you as an excuse for acts of terror. Now stand down or this ship will sit you down!"
Again she slashes her thumb over her throat before waving a hand. "Lock on main guns and blast that thing back to hell," she orders shortly.
The crew respond smartly. Again the Havant's RCS thrusters flicker as the ship readjusts her position subtly - just enough to bring the field of the ship's cannons forward. Energy blasts pour down from upper orbit, burning towards the lumbering kaiju as the frigate attempts to blow several holes through it.
KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Riika Sheder with Charge Ignition! KTS: Carina Cameron targets Riika Sheder with Bifors Beam Guns Sustained Fire! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to Parry Rena Lancaster's Charge Ignition, taking 3870 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 53782
KTS: Rena Lancaster has engaged Riika Sheder KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Carina Cameron's Bifors Beam Guns Sustained Fire, taking 4050 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 49732 Relena_Peacecraft teleports in. <Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
There is a fluster of discussion, on the deck of the Nadesico, as Riika invokes Junius Seven. It's an event which many of them have opinions of -- and since the Nadesico is a civilian ship, very few of those opinions include military necessity. (From Goat, perhaps. He did serve.)
"Incoming," Ruri interrupts the emotional strain, tone flat, opening a few communication windows on the deck to make sure they'll pay attention to her through their heated debate. Her voice is the only one which didn't join the conversation.
Minato Haruka, the ship's helmswoman, does her best to evade the incoming blow -- but the electricity catches on the edge of one of the Nadesico's forward prongs, and grounds through the ship, regardless of her otherwise-swift response. CRASH, goes the thunderclap, deafening all conversation for a sharp moment.
"Electrical damage to forward systems," Ruri reports, unflinching and stoic. "Engines undamaged. Continuing to divert power to Unit-01's feed."
"We can't fire the Gravity Blast Cannon under these conditions," Yurika frowns, concludes, decides. "What's our missile status?"
"Functional," Ruri replies, without decoration.
"Then, please commence physical bombardment," Captain Yurika commands.
"Missiles, firing," Ruri acknowledges, and inputs the command -- just one missile, careening in with very particular targeting information. Shinji has demonstrated real munitions work, but they are dangerously close to nuclear weapons.
She looks down, at the readings of her console, with an unreadable expression...
... and opens a communication window of her own, to Riika. (It might be one-way, depending on Riika's permissions; it shows the young, pale girl transmitting, in any case.)
"Excuse me." Ruri says, entirely proper. Introduces herself, properly: "Nadesico systems operator, Ruri Hoshino. Do you have credible grounds to believe the Junius Seven incident will repeat again?"
KTS: Ruri Hoshino targets Riika Sheder with Seeker Missile!
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
"Damn it." Shinji hisses as his shots hit monster shell. That thing is ripping through the defenses, just like Father predicted. Energy control is dangerous enough on its own, but in a controlled environment like the moon? It has all the advantages here and it knows it.
ZAFT. Shinji doesn't know much about ZAFT except that they left a scar in Asuka Langley's soul. Carina, of all people, kind of sums up his rough feelings but the hell does he know about politics-and really, Shinji actually barks a laugh at the Brittanian noblewoman talking about racial hierarchies. "Holy shit, she said that with a straight face." Shinji pauses, realizes that was on coms, and decides to pretend it wasn't.
"We're on a serious time limit here." Shinji says instead, "Our readings indicate that the monster can absorb and redistribute energy at an astounding rate. Maybe even the potential energy of the weapons locked inside of there. Or worse, it can't handle eating a nuke, but'll try anyway-damn."
Shinji can't dodge in this thing, so he holds up his arms to try and absorb the rain of energy bullets screaming his way. Hunks of armor go flying off, and only NERV's steely professionalism and the Nadesco's incredibly well designed hangars keep that from being a bloodbath.
"Third." The Commander says, sneering.
"I couldn't make that shot if I wanted to, sir, not with this gun!" Shinji snaps back, lowering his targeting aid and trying to make a more careful shot at the kaiju. It's a gattling gun so careful is really more of a state of mind, but Shinji's lost one of his tethers and is desperate to at least slow this thing down before it can crack the defenses.
KTS: Riika Sheder successfully intercepts Ruri Hoshino's Seeker Missile KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Riika Sheder with Progressive Gatling Cannon Burst! KTS: Riika Sheder successfully avoids Shinji Ikari's Progressive Gatling Cannon Burst
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The kaiju, it seems, does not limit itself to electronic systems when draining power. Liam lets out a huff of breath as his shots dissipate in mid-flight; the EM field monitors report premature magnetic bottle dissolution, as if that wasn't obvious. "Reactor still reads nominal," Liam transmits, over the allied band. "It's compromising electrical fields. All of them." Which could be important to more than just him.
"Acknowledged, Kakapo Lead," Liam says, his voice at once emotionless and taut with tension. Careful, she says. "Will radio for pickup if disabled."
Junius Seven, Liam thinks. He was... back in the lab when that happened. His chest starts to tighten as what he read online calls up--
Don't waste your breath, hisses Hephaestus' voice, from his memory.
Liam's body reacts to the kaiju's attack before his forebrain has a chance to catch up. Impulses race down reflex wiring, his body moving with fluid, blinding grace. The Proto Helios whips up a hand, and several vent covers blow open on the back of its forearm, twisting together to form a shield. The dull CLANG of the impact echoes through Liam's cockpit as the kaiju tears a fresh wound into his machine. Bits of armor spray out onto the regolith, but it isn't the kind of decisive hit that would put the Gundam down for good.
The second roar had him on edge. Now, a fresh tide of adrenaline washes through Liam's brain, hot and sharp and almost overwhelming. Liam bares teeth in a snarl. Behind him, the SUNBURST finishes spooling up--the kaiju gave the magnetic bottle technical difficulties, to say the least--but none of the plasma leaks outwards, instead staying within that armored shell. The Proto Helios' right fist glows red, then white as heat builds within it. With no vacuum, it can't escape.
he machine leaps high into the air, positively soaring in the low gravity, and draws back its right fist. Liam launches a punch at the kaiju's massive head--it's not undisciplined enough to be a haymaker, but it's close.
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Riika Sheder with Blazing Strike! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Liam 7-020's Blazing Strike, taking 5580 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 44152 KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged Riika Sheder KTS: Liam 7-020 begins a Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Alexis Kerib has posed.
Alexis had intended to be hands-off for this. Strictly speaking, he still is; as a creature of the void in a battlefield in the age of Minovsky warfare, floating impossibly far off to the side, he isn't detectable.
But he is *watching*. After all, he'd enabled this! He'd had to go a slightly more circuitous route than he usually does with Akane, granted, but he can certainly provide devices and templates for known good kaiju designs! (He'd had to do some of that for Akane at first, too, but there's something special about the shape of that heart.)
"Hmmm. Well, she certainly has the knack!" Alexis remarks to himself. "Perhaps I've been holding myself back, being so picky."
... No one can say Alexis is having a bad time, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika, who is a test pilot by trade when she's not borrowing kaiju from strange seijin, recognizes AMBAC movement when she sees it. Seeing it in transformers is not unheard of; seeing it on a Variable Fighter is unexpected and frankly a little bizarre. If she was fighting against it in her GINN, she might have a reaction.
All she can do here and now is let Mecha Trembulor handle it, and it doesn't, or at least not well. It swings its head, trying to catch the blade with one of its horns, but it is too slow, too bulky; Rena's saber cuts down its side, and if the saber is losing power it hasn't lost enough to make it any less dangerous.
And it does all this with that aura building. Passing through it causes an electrical crackle, a feeling of hair raising on the arm. Whatever it's charging, it's big.
Similarly, Liam charges in and encounters much the same field - but also like Rena, he puts his fist directly into the plating of Mecha Trembulor. It lets out another one of those staticky roars, and if anything the flux intensifies. There is *visible* crackling now, and not just on Mecha Trembulor.
"..."
Riika's response to Carina is nothing, at first. Not because she doesn't have a good answer but because she has too many; if she was a different sort of conversationalist she'd sputter to get them all out, but instead she's just shocked and silent. Cannonfire rains down across Mecha Trembulor, blasting it and the area around it. Riika can't tell if it's weakening the hatch that the kaiju needs to get through but it can't *hurt* matters.
"I don't," Riika says. "I don't think that. I think we *could* live together if you'd just *let* us! The food caps, the attack on our agricultural colonies - all we want is peace! And if the only way I can do it is to destroy these weapons, then... that's what I'll do. Riika out."
Shinji is correct, though: in a place like the Lunar base, dependant on power for everything from computers to survival, the kaiju has an advantage, and Riika knows it. That's why she picked this one, here and now; there'd be no other way. He fires the gun just as Mecha Trembulor draws in an immense amount of energy, pulling from the ships above, then - fires -
'Fires' is a bad word for it. It's less 'fire' and more 'discharge', a tremendous wash of energy and light. It explodes out in all directions, possibly literally picking up and throwing the closest units both with a shockwave and by sheer electromagnetism repelling their metal. Shinji's bullets have no chance of penetrating it, and a stray arc disrupts the incoming missile from Ruri in a white-hot bolt.
When the light clears, Mecha Trembulor is standing next to a badly warped hatch. It's almost - but not quite - open enough for Mecha Trembulor. It's venting, visible in rising smoke and dust, but the hatch is meant to be vented, and it stops quickly, suggesting it's not draining the entire base's air. Just depressurizing the storage section.
Hopefully.
Mecha Trembulor roars, and more flashes of light erupt, this time closer to Shinji. Things pop and explode like tiny fireworks or squibs, capacitors discharging and electricity sparking.
In her shuttle, Riika shakes her head as little flecks of light dance across her sight. Her visor, too, was overloaded by that bolt. Closing her eyes does nothing, but she does it anyway, reflexively, opening. Still spots, flickering static. She'll have to put up with it.
That's when she notices Ruri has punched comms through. Riika actually does have visuals on because it didn't occur to her not to; it shows a ZAFT pilot, one of the elite red-clothed ones, in the PLANTs variation of a normal suit; red through the body, pinkish-purple across the chest and shoulders, with the widely flared helmet. Beneath it, she has a dark visor with almost circuit-like patterns. "...what?" she asks, surprised. She flicks it to sound-only immediately. "I don't - I don't know. But as long as you have that to threaten us with, can we be safe?"
KTS: Riika Sheder targets Ruri Hoshino with Power Drain! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Carina Cameron with Power Drain! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Shinji Ikari with Energy Roar! I don't understand that. Try this instead: +map 11 on Rena,Liam
KTS: Riika_Sheder Changes attack to Rena Lancaster and Liam 7-020 with Energy Blastwave. KTS: Rena Lancaster's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Rena Lancaster blocks Riika Sheder's Energy Blastwave, taking 1140 damage! KTS: Riika Sheder repulses Rena Lancaster, forcing her to disengage. KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 280. KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Trust Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari blocks Riika Sheder's Energy Roar, taking 2280 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 319. KTS: Ruri Hoshino's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Riika Sheder rattles Ruri Hoshino, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Ruri Hoshino fails to evade Riika Sheder's Power Drain, taking 3069 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 358. KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Riika Sheder rattles Carina Cameron, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Carina Cameron blocks Riika Sheder's Power Drain, taking 3069 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 397. KTS: Liam 7-020 parries Riika Sheder's Energy Blastwave, taking 1440 damage! KTS: Riika Sheder repulses Liam 7-020, forcing him to disengage. KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 436. <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I know," Rena answers Shinji. "Be careful. Fall back if that could get you in serious trouble, okay? No one wants to see you get hurt." The Lieutenant is, perhaps, unaware of the conversation being had with his father at this very moment.
Then, she frowns at Liam. "No, fall back if you're taking heavy damage. That's an order."
Can she give him orders? She isn't sure. She decides to try anyways.
Her beam saber flickers -- fades for a moment -- and comes back online. She frowns -- then flicks it off, and slams it back into the recharge rack. She should keep it there, until she needs it. The Prophecy's HUD begins to flash warnings at her -- that the power drain is greater than expected.
Energy crackles, as the kaiju roars. Then, it unleashes a powerful blast at her. While the YF-25A brings it shield up, the pinpoint barriers tracking across its body to cover as much of it as they can, the blast ultimately catches it and blows it backward into lunar space.
Rena grits her teeth, then moves her hand down -- and the Prophecy's body and legs fold, but only halfway to what they were. Wings extend back out. The machine moves -- but both arms twist to the side, and the GERWALK-mode variable fighter uses AMBAC movements to do a tight turn.
Then it hits the thrusters, and soars back in close. Rena leans forward in the cockpit, taking a deep breath, as she comes careening in close to the kaiju. "Kakapo leader," she transmits, "Bruiser one! Keep clear!"
One of the larger missiles from the Prophecy's wing drops off. The missile shoots off -- as the YF-25A banks around sharply. It explodes with a colossal fireball, centered on its head.
Rena Lancaster transforms to YF-25A Prophecy A-type (GERWALK)
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Accel Spirit Command and Has Engaged with Riika Sheder KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Riika Sheder with RRM-14 Reaction Missile! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Rena Lancaster's RRM-14 Reaction Missile, taking 6270 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 37882 <Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
Carina probably has at least some of this spiel written down. It would not be the first time she's practiced giving a speech.
As Riika's voice comes back over the radio, Carina tosses her hair back with a cast of her hand. "Please, tell me more about how wholesome and innocent you are," she scoffs. "Your superiors' idea of living together is for you to dicta-"
"She's cut the line, sir," Stockton murmurs apologetically.
Carina slaps her hand against her thigh with a huff. "I was talking," she vents again. "Who does she think she is, anyway? Who's this Riika person?" Knitting her brows, she leans heavily forward in her chair.
"...I don't like the cut of that lady's jib," she mutters.
She is distinctly less happy with the Mecha Trembulator blasting things so freely. Energy roars through the air and washes up into space, reaching the hovering frigate with little difficulty. Again Carina's obliged to grab the arm of her chair to keep from being bucked out of it in low gravity. "Damn it," she hisses. "Bring us around broadside! Don't let that thing keep hitting us in the bow!"
It's up to Edy Vieira to make that one work under fire. "Trying, sir!" he yelps, holding onto his chair with both feet hooked into the rest bar as he jabs at the flight controls. The Havant moves sluggishly, the persistent power drain beginning to take its toll. Energy scorches across exposed hull, burning away outer layers and bleeding through in places. A jet of atmosphere escapes one buckling hull compartment before an emergency bulkhead rolls down internally to cover it off.
"Keep our firepower on it," she snaps, gesturing broadly with her free hand. "It's making far too much progress for my liking. And try not to blow up any of the base!"
Again, Carina asks much of the crew - bombarding something from range in the midst of a friendly base isn't easy. Lieutenant Stockton manages by virtue of being no dullard. As the big ship turns broadside, the turrets on that flank rotate, sending lances of firepower rocketing down to shower the giant kaiju. Simple, but hopefully functional.
Even as the vessel unloads, Carina taps a comline - to Rena Lancaster, of all people.
"Kakapo Leader, this is the Havant," Carina says crisply. "Can you tie the hostile unit up? We can't risk it getting anywhere close to any weapons stored on the premises. This is priority one."
KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Rena Lancaster KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Carina Cameron targets Riika Sheder with Bifors Beam Guns Standard Fire! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Carina Cameron's Bifors Beam Guns Standard Fire, taking 3420 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 34462
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"Energy discharge imminent," Ruri opens a communication window to warn their pilots, for all the good it will do. "Brace for impact."
This is not to say Ruri Hoshino doesn't have her own thoughts, about what's being said. With perfect auditory clarity, she hears... what Carina thinks, about... ZAFT. And she hears Riika's desperation as a member of that force, as well.
But Ruri, unlike her fellows, isn't one who shares her personal thoughts in the middle of a battle. She has followed a different route to Liam, certainly -- but there may be enough similarities, in their unshaking focus.
Minato has no hopes of evading a wave like that -- it physically picks up the front end of the Nadesico, before the ship falls back to its nominal orientation. Unit-01's cables may get a good, solid shake from the effort.
She inputs the command to send out another of those pinpoint-target missiles, with orders to twist around the kaiju and come at it from behind, this time.
She does this without speaking, because she's focused on her communication window. Running two tracks of conversation -- with Riika, with Omoikane -- is trivial, for someone like her.
That helmet... she saw it for a moment, anyway. Those patterns --
"If you're acting to prevent a possibility, but you are unaware of plans to attack, don't you think you're provoking enemy action?" She delivers this question with no particular condemnation -- if anything, she's curious. "It's strange that you're committing to a first strike for the sake of peace. I think if you act, you should be prepared for the world to act against you... but that doesn't sound like what you want."
Ruri might be young -- very young, even considering the downwards pressure on age-of-enlistment with every passing atrocity -- but she's not speaking with arrogant assumption, saying that. Rather, the girl who helped Nergal break through the Big Barrier, and who now has to calm Omoikane every time he sees ships like the Havant act the way they do...
Ruri insists, polite but frank, with that same unshakeable expression: "Are you acting under orders?"
KTS: Ruri Hoshino has activated the Attune Spirit Command. KTS: Ruri Hoshino has activated the Enable Spirit Command. KTS: Ruri Hoshino targets Riika Sheder with Seeker Missile! <Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
More reflection as a shuddering wave of energy melts his progressive bullets. Shinji grunts, frustrated. "It's like an ATField, I can't get anything through. I might as well be throwing popcorn up here. It's mowing through us like we aren't even here!"
"Thousands." Gendo Ikari says, softly.
"What?" Shinji says, even as he watches NERV staff run the hell out of the way as the thing charges another blast.
"With the power out, no one can evacuate. There must be thousands of people working here." Gendo Ikari says, as if talking about the weather. "Families. Children, guilty of nothing more than building ships."
"Maybe we shouldn't have stored our nukes next to a shipyard, then." Shinji grumbles, trying to ignore it. "Maybe feddie option one shouldn't be blowing the hell out of anyone."
"What is relevant is what is happening now, Third Child. What if Ibukis theory is correct? What if it blows the stockpile trying to gorge itself on it? It's an animal. It cannot help itself. You must fight harder."
"How, I can't get a shot in-" Shinji snaps, and is taken by surprise by the range and power of the shocking feedback from the monster. Unit-01 is overcome, taking a shaking step back. There's a crushing sound, and screams, as a scaffold is toppled over. Shinji looks out of the monitor, wide eyed, shocked.
Brown uniforms are swarming, some pulling people out of the damaged shipping containers, most moving further back within the Nadesco. His father.
His father is holding his side. Bleeding, some of the wood from one of the containers lodged in his side, being helped by Maya. Shinji breathes.
He detaches the restraints, but keeps the return cord, pulls a progressive knife out of Unit-01's shoulder, and leaps bodily out of the Nadesco. Shinji breathes, as Unit-01 hurtles through the Lunar sky like the wrath of god, aiming to plunge its knife directly into the kaiju's head, hoping to find a soft spot in the monster.
2:00:00
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Accel Spirit Command and Has Engaged with Riika Sheder KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Riika Sheder with Progressive Knife Drive!
KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Ruri Hoshino's Seeker Missile, taking 4050 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 30412
KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Shinji Ikari's Progressive Knife Drive, taking 6480 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Shinji Ikari's Find The Core activates, causing Nullify! Your unit's HP stands at 23932
KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Riika Sheder
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The Mobile Trace transmits feedback from the impact, the solid CLANG of a fist meeting metal exoskeleton and bending it, ever-so-slightly. Cybernetics activate and shoot dopamine into Liam's brain, reward stimulus for a maneuver well-played. But the kaiju master's words are at odds with his own empathy, and it struggles against the fight response building to a crescendo inside him.
The Proto Helios' boot-jets ignite, and it arcs up and away, backflipping at the apex of its leap. It takes it a good ten or so seconds to touch down, and when it does, moon-dust rises from the impact.
'No, fall back if you're taking heavy damage. That's an order.'
"Acknowledged," Liam says, his voice at once full of aggressive energy and utterly hollow. He can follow her order and be useful, all he has to do is--
Light boils off the kaiju, and the EM sensors start screaming at him. Liam eyeballs the measurements, and in the split-second it takes for the pulse to reach him, he reacts. The Proto Helios crosses its arms in front of it. The SUNBURST's projectors howl as its computer does calculations, reads data from Liam's implants, and spools out an EM field of opposite polarity to the kaiju's. The impact rocks the damaged Mobile Fighter, and sends it skidding back across the crater floor. Several lights turn red as auxiliary EM control nodes overheat and shut down. The kaiju's maneuver was partly-successful--the Proto Helios is no longer in its face. But it's still operational.
The cockpit's thermal alarm chimes, once, and Liam glances at it. His suspicions were right. The cockpit heat-shielding's still holding, but even with the STARBURST half-functional thanks to the kaiju, it's getting too hot.
"Closing to optimal range," Liam chokes out, and the Proto Helios accelerates after the kaiju. He sees that open door. "Riika--" The transmission might be dead, but he still got that name. "Don't you dare--!" His voice is all tension as the Proto Helios lands, and plants its feet.
Light boils up from beneath its armor. "Purging outer jacket," Liam states. "SUNBURST stage 1 active."
Conductive coils transmit the fusion-heat outwards, into the Proto Helios' armor. It starts to boil, and then the heat-shielded explosive bolts go off, one after another, turning that armor into gobbets of flying, half-molten metal. It's like a shotgun blast at very close range, from an unexpected angle.
Beneath, the Proto Helios' structure is still glowing with unearthly heat. What is this machine?
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Riika Sheder with SUNBURST - Superbolide!
KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Liam 7-020's SUNBURST - Superbolide, taking 4650 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 19282
KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged Riika Sheder KTS: Liam 7-020 roots his unit, coming to a standstill and leaving him vulnerable.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika expected anyone who managed to deploy - and stay deployed - to fight Mecha Trembulor. She expected that she'd have to fight her way in, and so nothing here had been too outrageous.
She was *not* expecting a reaction missile.
The reaction missile explodes into something that is less a fireball, especially in no atmosphere, and more a solid sphere of light and heat. It sends even starker shadows across the base top than Lunar light normally provides and it's nearly blinding to look at. Even Riika, who is in a shuttle, viewing it through a screen, *and* has filtering on her visor, squints in its brightness.
Mecha Trembulor did not like that. The tone of its roar is different... and yet, even after a reaction missile, it still exists. The armour plates are blackened and the kaiju itself is blinded and moving like a wounded thing, but it's managed to survive the experience - and it is *angry*.
The Havant's shots impact it in the flank and back. It does some damage to the surrounding terrain, but Lieutenant Stockton has done a good job; while the stone and the pavement and some of the metal are damaged, the Havant has done no additional damage to the hatch. It does more to keep Mecha Trembulor off-balance. Nadesico's follow-up missile does similarly - Mecha Trembulor attempts to shoot down the missile, but still half-blind from the explosion of the reaction missile, it can't hit it.
Shinji comes in. Hard. Riika saw him, but it's hard to give Mecha Trembulor tactical updates - it doesn't really react the same way to them as a flight of MSs. The knife goes in, and there is a soft spot; the plating that covers around the horn at the top of the head, towards the back of the neck, lobster-tails over the lower plate. But when it's craning its neck around, it reveals an open, soft spot, which his knife finds.
The superheated suit slides in, spraying its own armour in an attack. It's nothing Riika has seen before (and she pilots things that have purgeable armour) and she winces, reflexively, both because of the damage he's done to the underside of Mecha Trembulor and because it is raising a foot, fully intent on stepping on the Helios.
"No," she replies to Ruri. "...No. I decided this. I wanted to make sure. That's why I joined ZAFT: to keep people safe. I'm sorry. I have to go now." She drops the connection and, gently, gives Mecha Trembulor a prod.
Mecha Trembulor is a little busy but it knows what it must do, and it's charged on so much energy that it can actually do it. It roars, the released magnetic force pushing small objects away from it - and then it fires an enormous beam, a white core with cyan edging, pulsing and rippling in a complex pattern.
The beam strikes the hatch and blows it the rest of the way open. Mecha Trembulor keeps releasing its pent-up energy, firing beam after beam, and it only slowly runs down the energy; the biggest for Shinji, a focused beam towards Rena and the Nadesico in the distance. It's starting to lose cohesion by the time it gets to the Havant, and as for Liam -
The kaiju simply tries to step on him as it steps into the hatch.
It doesn't walk in so much as fall into the vertical shaft, its energy draw already doubling and redoubling. Many of the remaining lights inside the base go out and, for one painful moment, the circulation fans stop, stuttering back to life as the overstressed life support keeps on going.
A new field is changing, a distortion in the scanning: the missiles. Something about them is changing. One of the closest nuclear missile is no longer scanning as live at all, as the core transmutes to something depleted. It doesn't discharge this energy as radioactivity but as electricity, and the missile detonates with a sharp *crack* that's audible inside the base as chunks of missile ricochet off the walls, only the conventional explosive left to detonate.
Mecha Trembulor spreads its field, trying to draw as much as possible, and a second fire starts, then a third. It needs to be taken down immediately.
Inside her shuttle, Riika has gone pale. This isn't quite how she wanted it to work... but it *is* working. Two hundred forty thousand, seven hundred twenty-one: that's how many Coordinators died at Junius Seven. This is better; so far deaths are low, but that might not last. At least this is military. This is what she wanted: to stop the possibility of another nuke, doing something with a kaiju she cannot do with a mobile suit.
...right?
KTS: Riika Sheder targets Shinji Ikari with Sparking Beam! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Rena Lancaster with Energy Beam Focused Blast! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Ruri Hoshino with Energy Beam Focused Blast! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Carina Cameron with Energy Beam Wide Blast! KTS: Riika Sheder targets Liam 7-020 with Horn Gore! KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Carina Cameron blocks Riika Sheder's Energy Beam Wide Blast, taking 3480 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 260. KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Trust Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Shinji Ikari blocks Riika Sheder's Sparking Beam, taking 4200 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 299. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Rena Lancaster blocks Riika Sheder's Energy Beam Focused Blast, taking 3150 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 338. KTS: Liam 7-020 rushes into the attack! KTS: Liam 7-020 fails to react to Riika Sheder's Horn Gore, taking 4730 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Riika Sheder's Disruptor activates, causing Jam L1! KTS: Riika Sheder has engaged Liam 7-020 KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 377. KTS: Ruri Hoshino has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Ruri Hoshino has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Ruri Hoshino's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Ruri Hoshino fails to evade Riika Sheder's Energy Beam Focused Blast, taking 3375 damage! KTS: EN Regen activates. Your new EN value is 416. <Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
Ruri looks at the space where the audio-feed communication window was, after it disappears, closed from the other end. Her brow arcs, just so, a subtle shade of melancholy falling over the stone walls of her face.
It cannot be touched: the way of shadows on the wall, all cast by the fires of existence.
Megumi -- who didn't interrupt that connection, even given her role in communications -- looks sidelong, to Ruri, with a complicated expression. Before she can say anything, it's Ruri who speaks up: "Incoming."
It's the mission, without a single word wasted, again.
Ruri cycles the engines, re-allocating the power which Unit-01 has freed for them now it's disconnected its cables, feeding more power into the Distortion Field as the beam crashes towards them. This is a matter of moments, all calculated too, too quickly -- an open question, unspoken and held up to the light by the Havant's attitude. The sort of person who could...
Well, never mind that.
The blast rocks the Nadesico, regardless -- they're not used to fighting something quite so large, quite so overwhelming. In their recovery, they find that the kaiju is plunging down, inside.
Ruri speaks to their pilots, the ones she can help: "Now transmitting internal data and close-quarters operative optimisation."
She pauses, and adds, to the Helios: "You must reduce your core temperature or else risk a runaway thermic event." He can't vent all that heat in an internal environment, she thinks -- he's bound to cook someone. In a machine like that... what has Rena found, anyway?
KTS: Ruri Hoshino targets Liam 7-020 and Rena Lancaster with Coordinate. KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Ruri Hoshino coordinates maneuvers, raising Rena Lancaster's Piloting! KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Carina Cameron has activated the Valor Spirit Command. <Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
At the Havant's tactical controls, Lieutenant Stockton takes a second to assess damage to the surroundings. There's a lot less than he expected. He nods and rests his hands on his control board in readiness. "It's still up. Power buildup is continuing to escalate...."
"Right, it's going to blast us again," Carina decides. "Brace for impact."
She is not wrong. The kaiju keeps on blasting things, and even the beam's power falloff isn't going to do nice things to the Havant. The blast thunders across the frigate's hull and tears furiously at hulling and systems. Arcing energy ripples over the vessel, lights flickering as the entire ship lurches madly. One engine flickers, and Lieutenant Vieira gasps as he rushes to reroute power. "Maintaining altitude!" he chirps.
"Bring us around!" Carina calls over the rumble of the shaking ship. "Blast that thing before it gets inside the shaft!"
"We're too late," Commander Reeve observes tensely. Sure enough, Mecha Trembulor is going straight down the hole - and energy readings within begin to fall off.
Carina clutches the arm of her seat and leans forward, pressing her lips together. "It's not too late until we're dead," she determines with a crisp nod. A snap of her fingers and a comline opens - "Havant to 793 Squadron, all units. Follow that target in. Use any means necessary to destroy the intruder. Whatever speed is necessary to punch through the power drain, do it!"
The Havant cannot possibly fire down the hole without setting off more nukes. The ship stands off. The deed is left to the six VFs of City of Cornwallis Squadron. The six variable fighters come sweeping back in from above, banking hard...
...and they vanish down the hole.
Behind the controls of the first fighter, Squad Leader Morena Quispe Ayala maneuvers tensely, all too aware of her Nightmare Plus's power levels falling off. The variable fighter rockets towards the shaft as she calculates the maneuver. "Green Leader to all units. Drop on inertia only," she transmits to the rest of the squad. "Equalize and shift to GERWALK at the shaft bottom. Then unload."
"Green Leader, Green Three," one of the other pilots chirps. "That doesn't give us much room for error--"
Morena smiles tightly, a bead of sweat running down her cheek. "That's why they sent us. I trust you all. Let's go!"
There's no more time for debate. The six VFs cut their engines as soon as they've got the angle. Momentum takes them; coasting, preserving power against the withering drain, the VFs fall down the shaft after Mecha Trembulor. The shaft walls blur past.
On the bridge of the Havant, Carina watches the screen. She can't see what's happening from here.
Morena can. The shaft walls suddenly give way. "NOW," she shouts as she slams her controls and somehow manages to do about three tasks at once in the space of a heartbeat.
The maneuver is so split-second it pushes the limits of reaction time. The VFs suddenly power up right at the bottom of the shaft, unfolding into GERWALK mode and firing thrusters a second before they hit the ground. Green Five is actually a split-second too late and ends up belly-landing his VF halfway through transformation. The other five VF-171s flip into readiness, and Morena raises her voice. "HIT IT HARD! GO, GO, GO!"
In the seconds before their energy levels bottom out, the five surviving VFs dump their magazines all at once. Missiles and beam fire tear through the chamber, pouring towards the giant kaiju in the hopes of wiping it out before the power siphon wipes them out.
KTS: Ruri Hoshino coordinates maneuvers, raising Liam 7-020's Piloting! KTS: Carina Cameron targets Riika Sheder with Attack Pattern Blue Delta-7! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Carina Cameron's Attack Pattern Blue Delta-7, taking 7560 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 11722 <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"I'm on it, Havant," Rena transmits back, her voice strained mostly from the gee-forces of doing a hard pivot in the wake of the missile launch. She keeps an eye on the rear-view monitor, observing the too-bright flash of light from the reaction missile's explosion.
It feels a little strange to use, despite being cleared for use against kaiju.
'Huh,' Rena thinks, 'it worked,' when Liam acknowledges her order. She still stares at the Proto Helios for a moment -- not quite sure what to make of the way it seems to glow so brightly -- but she can't spare it an extended analysis right now.
The kaiju steps into the base. She sees the displays on the YF-25 flashing a warning; energy levels are dropping. She glances at her missile load, and notices a concerning fact.
The other reaction missile is depleted.
"Damn," Rena swears. The beam that Mecha Trembulor fires sweeps out across the GERWALK-mode fighter. The pinpoint barriers all swivel, catching it so that sparks fly where the beam hits. They all track with the beam, until Rena brings the arm shield up. It superheats; parts of melt and slag off, falling in slow motion to the lunar surface.
The YF-25A's legs and arms fold in, back into fighter mode. The thrusters activate -- and it blitzes forward, shooting off after the kaiju. Rena sends a transmission to Riika, as her back slams into the chair. She doesn't even know if she'll accept.
She feels a little bit from her. The uncertainty; the anger. She doesn't know whether she reads her emotions right. "Your name's Riika, right? Please, just--just think about this. You've every right to be angry about Junius Seven. But... but the people here, most of them didn't do that! They're scared and they don't want to die. I'm not going to arrest you or tell you that you shouldn't be mad. But..."
She grits her teeth, and then several missiles loose -- all at once, a veritable storm of missiles that twist and wind around each other. Vapor trails mix together, as they fly for the kaiju's back.
"Please don't do something that makes it hard to get out of bed tomorrow morning," she finishes. "Us spacenoids do that to ourselves a lot."
The Prophecy shoots in, over the Mecha Trembulor's shoulder and ahead of the missiles. It unfolds, wings snapping in, and its limbs move and thrusters fire to do a 180-degree turn in midair, firing its gunpod rapidly. Rounds pour at it, before the gunpod crackles -- and falls dead, power drained.
Rena makes the Prophecy toss it aside -- and then rips the beam saber free of the half-melted shield. She sees the energy levels dropping.
So she cuts the main thrusters, and lets the Battroid drop down -- and swing the beam saber under gravity's pull, slashing it down hard for the kaiju.
Halfway through the descent, the power starts flickering off. Screens go dead; one of the head cameras dims; the cockpit flashes red, as back-up power sources kick online.
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Riika Sheder with Pinpoint Blitz! KTS: Ruri Hoshino has activated the Resupply Spirit Command targeting Rena Lancaster KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Riika Sheder with Variable Sequence!
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Father was hurt. Others were hurt too. Because you couldn't stand still, Shinji thinks, as his knife tastes flesh and exalts in the mad drumbeat of war. Fighting is easy, even as his power reserves are drained horribly fast. He has seconds, he knows, and the beast in him glories in it. Father was hurt. Because you couldn't stand still.
He might die.
The LCL bubbles and boils at this thought, as awful strength fills Shinji's body, Unit-01's injured, wounded limbs. Shinji Ikari hates his father, he doesn't understand the man, and what he does understand he doesn't like very much. Gendo is cruel, his neglect is plain with one look on Rei Ayanami's blank face, his touch has ruined the lives of the children who protect the world against the Angels. He might die.
He might be dead right now.
Unit-01 is blasted dead in the face with the monster's Sparkle Beam, its head fully covered by compacted energy. Shinji should be dead, but for the ATField, as hunks of metal restraints are melted into uselessness and the LCL starts to bubble and boil, heavy welts forming on Shinji's body. When the blast abates.
Unit-01 is free, its horrible teeth and mouth revealed, the beast cannot breathe in space but somehow, someway functions regardless. Its awful green eyes turn directly at Riika's shuttle, just for a second, the huge eye making contact with the Coordinator.
"Get out here." Shinji hisses, not sure who he's talking to, though Newtypes and other Awakened sensitives might feel a piercing song of rage and pain and hate coming from the dread Unit-01. Shinji's green eyes narrow. "I'm not doing HITTING YOU."
Unit-01 leaps right down after the machine kaiju, breaking its return tether as the heavy ships desperately start bombing the crap out of the place. The ATField holds, and Unit-01 reaches to wrap its arms around the weak spot in Tremblor's neck, Shinji screaming as he tries to twist his entire Evangelion around and shatter the bone holding the Kaiju's awkward head in place, possibly tearing the skull clean off!
00:55:00
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Riika Sheder with Rip and Tear!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The Proto Helios' cockpit is approaching fifty degrees celsius, even after the armor purge. Liam could handle it even without the sealed suit, at least for a little while, and he'd be miserable--the problem is that the heat should be coming exclusively from the SUNBURST's plasma. Mecha Trembulor is doing its best to impair the magnetic bottling, and to heat the machine with violent EM discharges. Ruri's optimizations are still there, and still helping the computers conserve energy, but the machine is slowly cooking.
It's data, at least. Liam needs to survive to analyze it, with help. He intends to.
Mecha Trembulor has other plans for him, and makes those known. It raises a foot, and the Helios--burning hot and exposed from its gambit--can't quite get out of the way in time. Liam leaps to the side, but he's not quite fast enough to clear the beast's massive footprint. One of its claws catches the Helios in the side and tears a line from its right shoulder to the back of its right thigh. Fireworks of pain shoot off behind Liam's eyes. A bright red line ignites on his Trace Suit, joining the smaller ones left on his arm. Plasma boils out of a hole torn in one of the conduits.
Ruri--the child, the child who shouldn't be here--tells Liam the obvious. "Acknowledged, Nadesico," Liam chokes out. "Discharging auxiliary coolant tanks." He was supposed to save those for the return to the Ra Mari, but if he doesn't, there won't be a him left to return.
The Proto Helios rushes into the shaft, and falls. Vents on its sides burst open, and white plumes of coolant erupt from inside--a gelatinous, air-charged substance that clings to the Proto Helios' hull. Slowly, the runaway heat gauge begins to stabilize. Liam activates the jets, pushing the Proto Helios towards the side of the shaft. It trails superheated coolant and plasma behind it like a comet's tail. More plasma vents out from its back, sides, forearms--there are clearly shielded openings there. The plasma starts to curl into a long cylinder centered on the Proto Helios' right hand. Liam feels something hot and bright settle into his palm, and he clasps his fingers around it.
"Lieutenant Lancaster, Allied VFs, Eva-01," Liam says, his voice tight as a coiled spring. A great, white-hot focus boils off him, like the plasma boiling off his machine. "SUNBURST at stage 3. Steer clear of blast zone."
The Proto Helios thrusts its hand forward, its entire body--and every ounce of its weight--behind the motion. The plasma shapes itself into a great, gas-flame-blue spear, which drives directly for the kaiju's center of mass. Liam is trying to core it out in a single strike, but he's also being careful--he doesn't want to hit something on the other end, and the kaiju is blocking his vision.
KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Riika Sheder with SUNBURST - Sunbright Spear! KTS: Riika Sheder fails to react to Rena Lancaster's Variable Sequence, taking 7560 damage! Your unit's HP stands at 4162
KTS: Rena Lancaster roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Riika Sheder fails to Parry Liam 7-020's SUNBURST - Sunbright Spear, taking 8940 damage! Your unit's HP stands at -4778
KTS: Riika Sheder's Mecha Trembulor has been disabled.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Riika meets Evangelion Unit-01's gaze. Just for a moment. She can't match it for more than a second; her skin crawls. People are speaking to her. She responds to none of them. Her voice channel is on - she's just not making any noise on it.
As it falls, Mecha Trembulor continues to inhale power.
Energy flows to it, now from the missiles. Another slowly shuts down, though this one doesn't explode - it simply becomes dead and useless, completely depleted. There is a spreading fire, though: nobody's in that room but there are rather a lot of explosives in there.
More power than Riika meant. It sets fires; it causes stray arcs. Mecha Trembulor pulls deep, even causing the backup systems to flicker. It's just a matter of time before something goes horribly wrong, and Riika knows it. She tries to pull it back, force it to leave the systems with the people alone and focus only on the weapons - but she can't. Mecha Trembulor has been released and that's all there is to it.
But as it falls, the defenders strike at it. The Havant deploys a squad of VFs down the shaft, led - intentionally or not - by Rena, firing everything they have. Some of it is dispersed, but a lot of it strikes home; the kaiju seems to be rather monofocused on attacking now, and it doesn't use its field as effectively against the incoming fire.
The kaiju touches down. Proto Helios is there an instant later, driving a plasma spike straight into the center of mass of Mecha Trembulor. When the plasma hits the field around Mecha Trembulor, it brightens, the edges of it fraying away into flame and light - but the core of the spear of light drills right in, leaving a clear hole in the center of the kaiju. It lets out a roar, but there's something wrong with it, and the blue glow of its field is starting to flicker and fade.
And then the Evangelion lands, gripping the great kaiju's head. It twists, and it twists - and there's a *pop*, something both electrical, like a blown fuse, and physical, as resistance in the kaiju's neck vanishes and Unit-01 manages to twist its head almost all the way around. The kaiju crackles -
It implodes in a rush of light, leaving Shinji holding nothing but crawling sparks that fade in instants.
Riika is abruptly aware that she is in an unarmed, mostly unarmoured shuttle above a military base that is, with Mecha Trembulor's absence, rapidly reactivating. Lights are coming on, though the base defenses are still spinning up. Some of the downed mobile suits, undamaged aside from having a completely deactivated engine, are starting to rev back to life. Most importantly, the fire control systems that weren't purely physical join in, smothering the still-pressurized missile storage and nearby rooms where the electrical fires were beginning to spread in nonflammable chemicals.
Even here and now, Riika thinks, I couldn't finish it.
Did she want to...?
She could have killed everyone. She couldn't control it. Alexis had talked about helping her make a world of peace, but all she was going to do was make things worse.
Riika reaches forward, hand shaking, and flips the radio... off. Because she forgot she had it on. She flips it back on again an instant later. "I surrender," she says, her voice as even as she can make it. "But not to the Britannian. I'm not going to surrender to someone who will have me killed for what I am, not what I did. I'll surrender to the Nadesico."
The shuttle hovers there. It does not try to bail out immediately. (Riika knows it would be futile. Any of the variable fighters could catch it, as could the missile defenses of Ptolemaeus - she didn't destroy them on the way in, only turn them off.)
<Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
Green Five gets a front-row seat to a kaiju being totally demolished. Belly-flopping has its advantages.
Only when power begins to come back on down below can the Havant begin to pick up clear readings from the base. A transmission crackles back - Morena, tapping her comm with a heavy breath. "Havant, Green Leader. Target is down."
Carina flicks her hair back. "That was entirely too close," she states before snapping a glance to one side. "We're not done yet. Get a bead on that shuttle. I want it aboard as soon as--"
'I surrender, but not to the Britannian'
Carina puffs her cheeks out indignantly before snapping her fingers. The comm flicks on.
"Okay, racist," she huffs. "Some of us do actually believe in rule of law. Gosh."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
The Prophecy sets down on the base floor. It hits the ground, feet shaking; for a moment, it seems like the whole thing might go dark, but Rena can see -- on dimmed monitors -- the Evangelion twist the kaiju's head, until Mecha Trembulor breaks apart into a cloud of sparks of light. She draws in a gasp, and then she sighs with relief as the power levels on the Prophecy begin to climb back up.
"Th-that was intense..."
She says that to herself, not over a channel.
She falls quiet, as she listens. Her eyes widen in surprise when Riika surrenders -- so she hesitates for a second, then decides to possibly risk Eight York being cross with her. Moreso, after Carina says that; she is glad that her visual feed is cut, because she makes quite the face.
"The Ra Mari approves of the Nadesico handling the surrender," she says. "Londo Bell can sign off on that. Do you need an escort to the Nadesico, Miss Riika?"
<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.
Everything goes to hell. Why, Shinji thinks, is Liam always the fuck on fire? Is he the Human Torch? Does that make Shinji the Thing?
"Clobbering time." Shinji slurs, as his badly filtered LCL is starting to take its toll. He has to stop it though. For the thousands. Of babies. His father might've lied about. If he isn't dead. Where's the pop, there's always a pop.
There it is, Shinji thinks, as the kaiju explodes in his hands and Unit-01 stumbles backwards, falling to one knee, it's power utterly drained.
Aboard the Nadesco, Gendo Ikari sits as a medic applies high end false-skin spray to seal his wound. He's looking directly at the destruction below, his sunglasses covering any noticeable sign of a human feeling his eyes might reflect.
"Magnificent." Gendo informs Maya Ibuki. She bites her lower lip, and wonders what the hell she's doing in this madhouse.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam grits his teeth, and drives the spear forward. The right side of his body burns with pain, but adrenaline is helping run the show, and it says the pain can wait until the fight is done.
Unit-01 falls from above like a wolf on a wounded, struggling deer. The impact of the massive machine forces Liam to back off, and the Proto Helios leaps upwards, its head angling down as it starts to rise up the shaft. Liam's heart pounds as he watches Shinji grappling with the beast. Despite the lack of atmosphere, he feels the creature's neck cracking.
"Kill confirmed," Liam transmits, as the thing explodes in Eva-01's hands. He starts to race back up the shaft, and clears it in the space of ten seconds. "Seven-Dash-Zero-Two-Zero to Nadesico, Eva-01 is down. Send retrieval team and medics for Pilot Ikari immediately."
Riika... surrenders? Liam wasn't trained to handle POWs. "Forming up on your wing, Lieutenant," he says, as the wounded, burning Helios takes up position a respectful distance from the VF. It's missing most of its armor. The hull has reached almost a thousand Kelvin. Some bits are starting to look runny at the edges.
"Nadesico," Liam says, "do you have high-grade foaming external coolant, Type II, in inventory?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
There are some places it would be impractical for the Nadesico to follow -- too dangerous, for the people and the concrete, for the vast ship and its crushing Distortion Field to venture in. One of those factors might have worked well enough; both, no one on Nergal's flagship is willing to risk.
They have long memories for unspoken things.
Ruri transmits energy to the Prophecy -- and it doesn't all reach, in the fluctations that Mecha Trembulor demands, but she can tell the way it draws in power, the way the VF is struggling. She does not do the same to the Helios, whose readings concern her, even now. She doesn't want to cause more problems than she solves.
The Nadesico puts their faith in the pilots helping them... and the kaiju is defeated. "Thank goodness," Minato sighs, releasing the tension in her shoulders, the sort of relief which fans through the rest of the bridge easily.
(Ruri remains stoic -- but then, she always does.)
"Adjunct pilots, prepare for collection," she transmits, aware that -- if nothing else -- Unit-01 will need collection, after that. She's stopped in the middle of the motion, though, as --
Her head jerks up, that blank expression blinking, as Riika opens her radio back up and speaks. She, at least -- is stunned. Them..?
Captain Yurika Misumaru is much better at thinking on her feet, at least. "We accept," she agrees -- rather than the alternative, perhaps. "Please collect the ZAFT pilot as well as our assistants!"
"Ra Mari Commander, we read your assent," the communications officer, Megumi, confirms through a communications window. She adds, to Riika, in a way she hopes is reassuring: "She's with us."
Ruri engages the task of getting everyone aboard, though...
There's one last question...
"I'll direct engineering to prepare their Type II coolant," Ruri responds, to Liam, flat-faced. She doesn't even blink.
And, well -- when Riika's brought aboard, the Nadesico does take any sidearms she might have on her, and ask for identifying information like her name and her rank and who to contact about her, but that's about all they do. She's allowed to keep the rest of her gear; she's offered a change of clothing out of her pilot uniform, but no one is going to insist. It's a remarkably informal surrender, by all accounts. They don't even put her in a cell!
... the Nadesico aren't here to call a young lady who just wanted to prevent nuclear assault an irredeemable villain.
But they do want to talk.
<Pose Tracker> Carina Cameron has posed.
The Havant lurks in the area awhile longer. Through it all, the ship does beam a transmission to the Nadesico.
"We would request that you transfer the prisoner to the nearest Federation facility at the earliest possible opportunity," comes the message. It's not Carina's voice. Commander Arlynn Reeve sounds older and more modulated. "The individual in question is accused of serious war crimes and violations of numerous conventions on the use of biological and controlled weapons. We trust the representatives of Nergal will respect the laws of the Earth Federation and the proper administration of justice, including due process and fair trial."
Carina left the hail to Arlynn because she's busy sulking in her command chair. She folds her arms under her bust and actually pouts beneath a frustrated scowl.
"If that ship treats her with kid gloves, I swear to the Emperor I will literally land the Havant on them," she grouses.
At the helm, Edy Vieira turns his chair away slightly, indulging in a private, guiltily satisfied little smile at the captain's moment of seething.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Are you, um, okay?" Rena asks Liam. "You seem like you might not be. Your Gundam is kind of crispy, and as the owner and operator of a Gundam in the past, they're usually not supposed to be extra crispy."
She may be a little chatty with post-battle relief.
She also gives the Evangelion a worried glance. But Shinji seems -- well, fine might be wrong, but he seems to be in one piece. She gives a wary glance to Carina and her battle group, before she frowns. "We'll forward your request to Admiral Noa's desk to consider the matter, given that Londo Bell has jurisdiction over spacenoid insurrections," she replies.
<Pose Tracker> Riika Sheder has posed.
Thank goodness, Riika thinks. She didn't know what she'd do if they turned her down. She'd have to try to run for it, and, well...
She doesn't give herself very good odds of that. Though, what will ZAFT think about her not even trying? They understand POWs, certainly, but she wasn't exactly on a mission she was ordered on.
"Understood," Riika says. Now she mostly sounds tired. The shuttle begins to approach the Nadesico, hesitant at first and a little slowly as she tries to figure out the best way to dock with it, even with the escort. Fortunately, she's a good pilot and once she sees where the bay is, it's not too bad.
She shoots a glance backwards, toward the shaft Mecha Trembulor went down, as the shuttle carefully enters Nadesico airspace.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
This is the part where Liam fades into the background, or turns into an instrument of pressure, as necessary. The SUNBURST system spools down and shuts off as the plasma reactor powering it deactivates. Plasma ejects from the machine's vents in one last burst, and blows away on the solar wind.
'Are you, um, okay?'
The Lieutenant. Liam blinks. "Cockpit temperature stands at fifty celsius," he says, which is definitely weird, even if he's got a normal suit on in there to protect him from it. "Data gathered on viability of space deployment: 'Don't, unless no other options are available.'" The tension is draining out of Liam's voice, too, and the tight, bright knot of adrenaline and focus is slowly cooling of.
But he didn't answer the question.
"I'm... all right. I was made for this machine."
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena watches as the shuttle enters the Nadesico. There is still some nervousness there, like she expects something to go wrong -- but no, Riika enters, and there isn't a tragedy playing out. She sighs, and she slumps back then. Her eyes fall to the screen, and at the Gundam.
"I... uh, I see," she says. She wrinkles her nose; that's dangerously hot, to say the least. And what Liam says next--well, she remembers their conversation about him.
"Let's get back," she says. "We'll need to get a crew for the Evangelion. And I'll need to let the Ra Mari know what's happening. And you should really, really get out of that cockpit as soon as possible."
The YF-25 lifts off -- and starts towards the Nadesico, too.
<Pose Tracker> Ruri Hoshino has posed.
"We hear your request, Commander," Megumi informs Commander Reeve, quite professional. This is not, notably, agreement to the terms. "Now, please excuse us." This is not, exactly, the way a military officer ought to close out her message, but Megumi isn't a military officer. Like the rest of the Nadesico's crew... she's a civilian!
The Nadesico has a special bay for shuttles, even -- Riika can park alongside the Hinagiku, the Nadesico's own shuttle.
As for the Helios -- a couple of the Aestivalis pilots deploy with big, chunky hoses. "Time for a bath~!" Comes the cheerful, chipper tones of one Hikaru Amano, in her small orange machine.
"Coolant shower... the coolest shire..." That's the blue pilot, Izumi Maki, who laughs uproarously at her joke even if no one else does.
They'll get everyone inside. It's fine! It's probably fine.