2022-12-07: A Meaningless Desperate Effort
- Cast: Sousuke Sagara, Kallen Kozuki, Rin Starking, Ai Martel, Melissa Mao, Kurz Weber
- Where: Near 'The Tower' Orbital Elevator
- Date: U.C. 0096 12 07
- Summary: The tracking bracelet Sousuke Sagara gave to Emilia Eschonbach shows her in the vicinity of a recent Black Knights assault. He doesn't know why she's there, just that she's a high-value individual and needs to be rescued. Unfortunately, her other friends have the same idea.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Emilia may have forgotten something, in her preparations for this tightly-timed operation: She's still wearing a single tracker. It's not a general beacon. It doesn't broadcast an all-bands distress call. It just quietly notifies a certain receiver, every so often...a receiver held by the person who provided it to her: Sousuke Sagara.
Mithril can get people at any point on the planet in a matter of hours, but due to the chain of information at play, it took Sousuke a couple report cycles to find out this was information Mithril should have. Unfortunately, that means Mithril is running behind.
"Feel like a sitting duck out here," Kurz Weber mutters, peering through his scope. He's set up with his bipod-mounted sniper rifle, monitoring the tree line. No M9; the rescue was urgent enough that all three of the SRT sent to retrieve the 'package' have been hoofing it. Kurz is not impressed, but still: "What's the odds she's still there?" he asks, that one on secure radio. "I don't see shit."
"Hopefully she's just gone to ground," Melissa Mao mutters. She's up front, in a truck being driven by the third member of their party: "....but I'm not liking these odds, Sousuke," she adds, scanning the surroundings herself. Dawn's light is peeking over the mountaintops by now.
"Tracking data did not show her within the Federation quarantine after the attack," Sousuke says. "Which means she won't have been caught by rescue teams, either. The Minovsky density here has gotten too high due to response vessels, so the only solution is a search on foot."
Mao grunts, while Sousuke veers down another road, passing through int plains with the occasional spot of tree and brush. "Hope this goes better than Khanka," Mao mutters.
"Her grandfather isn't that dangerous," Sousuke says, wrongly.
<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.
One such rescue team, specially focused on picking up Emilia, is being headed up by the group's acting field commander. She didn't have to. Arguably she probably shouldn't have. Should have delegated the job to somebody a little further down, like the Zero Squad she's in charge of.
Unfortunately Kallen took a severe blow to her pride and confidence, seeing her first command operation as a disaster. So she took on this additional job both out of personal responsibility toward somebody she cares about. And because she feels she has to make up for what, in her mind, is a personal failure.
"Alright. We've narrowed the area down, avoided the response teams, and Operative C (Not to be confused with C2) has our exit route secured. Keep your eyes peeled for any signs of where she might be bunkered down." A hand squeezes the knife she keeps on her. The others would be better shots, so if needed, one of them gets her handgun. She's most confident at short range.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Emilia is missing! Well, that sucks.
Rin Starking had parked, shaking visibly as she got out of the KMF operational module, descending downwards before fumbling for something on a web vest. From a nondescript plastic container, probably chosen for being Tactical, she had shaken out three white tablets, thrown them in her mouth, and dry crunched them.
"Oh... ow... OH! Ow! Damn it...!" But after that, it was a matter of draining a half-liter of water, splashing a little on her face, and seeing to securing the computer cores of her 'buddies,' Rancor and Scorn.
BUT NOW-- "You bet I'm coming!" Rin had taken only a moment to put on the ballistic impact helmet she had promptly taken off once they'd gotten in the LZ, snapped on the chin strap, and then all but *bounced* after Kallen.
She will absolutely take the gun.
"I'm looking," Rin mumbles back to Kallen. "God, this is dense..."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Emilia Eschonbach is in need of rescue after her ejection during the Black Knights' ill-fated, crossfired train assault. After making her retreat, Ai Martel has elected to accompany the team dispatched to rescue her.
That she'd be out here searching, regardless of an organized search party, hardly needs to be said.
Besides the bandage over her badly-bruised forearm, Ai's pilot suit is... something. It's *quite* form-fitting, a dark red, shiny garment with belts placed for seemingly no purpose except to accentuate certain features. Having declined the handgun, Ai instead wields a sword which looks better suited for a king of Medieval Europe than a warrior of the Universal Century. But, extravagant or not, it slices through brush and branch with ease.
She glances at the compass hanging from her neck. "Mm. Still on the correct course, at least," she notes, peering deep into the underbrush. "My, my... a Knightmare Frame's core block can fly quite a distance, though, can't it?" She seems remarkably unperturbed by the dense jungle around them.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"Got another team, comin' up on your two!" Kurz radios over. "Those are...Black Knights uniforms? The hell do they want!?"
"Hostages," Mao replies, without missing a beat. "Gimme deets, Uruz 6!"
"Three women. Two gingers, one's a blonde. The blonde's in some kinda one-off uniform, probably an elite. One of the redheads is too. Ho-ho mama, do you get to just look at them for a recruitment bonus?! Those tits are--"
"Not those deets!" Mao snaps, and slaps a clip into her assault rifle. "Sousuke! We're going in hot! Even if we just scatter them, that'll give us some time for Kurz to scan around!"
"Affirmative," Sousuke says, and then grabs the handbrake. Dirt flies as the open-cab jeep drifts around the corner of the small path they've been driving down, and right into the path of the Black Knights team.
Melissa Mao is a Chinese-descended woman with short-cropped but shaggy hair, complete with a pair of long, scruffy side-bangs hanging to her chin. She is also, one, standing up in a vehicle that has BARELY stopped moving, and two, already sighting up an assault rifle.
"Y'all chessmen're in the wrong damn hemisphere!" she taunts, and then opens fire - at their legs, attempting to drive the group apart.
"Not trying to kill?" Sousuke notes, with some surprise.
"You just know the face Tessa'd make," Kurz quips over the comm.
<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.
Kallen's usual piloting outfit is a custom job. A deep red, a touch darker than her hair, accented with Silver. While she has put a Black Knights coat over top... she also really couldn't handle the heat much more. So the front of the pilot-suit is just a smidge less than fully zipped. Not that she's hiding a whole lot either way with how it clings, moreso in this damned heat. She's got a special cap on as well, with a visor extending down over her face to only show her mouth. It mostly obscures her hair, aside from a couple wild strands of red, and completely hides most any identifying facial feature.
Sousuke, the only one here to ever fight the Guren, could probably make an educated guess this is its pilot, just from the rampancy of the primary color. And is probably thanking whatever force he chooses to send a prayer to, that the silver-armed devil isn't with her.
Kallen herself has not yet SEEN Sousuke in the truck, so as Mao opens fire, she's QUICKLY zipping back up, and gesturing the team to move. "Split, lose anyone tailing you, and we'll focus down one by one before they can reunite." The SRT will not be making this EASY FOR THEM, but she's outlining the basic shape of a plan. And Rin does have a gun, so maybe she can manage a few potshots. Maybe.
On the subject of Ms. Starking... She'll need to ask about those pills the girl keeps taking later. Try to find out what they actually are, in case it's a medical condition she needs to keep watch on. But RIGHT NOW, they have larger problems.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Redheads! Blondes! They've got 'em all in Britannia! Or in the Black Knights as the case may be. Rin, at least, is glad she has bare arms, because it means that she's going to sweat somewhat less.
%"I mean it has rockets," she says, if doubtfully. "I didn't think it'd go this far. Maybe she caught an updraft or something from the drogue chute? I mean, they're usually optimized for an urban environment. I hope she didn't land in the water. Oh my God, that would be horrible."
And then -
'y ' a l l c h e s s m e n ' r e i n t h e w r o n g'
It's coming from over there.
Rin pivots around, raising up the borrowed handgun and taking almost perfect aim directly towards where Mao is based purely on sound, before pulling the trigger -
click
'h e m i s p h e r e'
Oh right, Rin thinks, clicking off the safety, and THEN pulling the trigger -
BLAM!
"Hiyyyyyh!" Rin then says, leaping like a freshly landed fish at the underbrush as SOMEONE LITERALLY SHOOTS AT THEM??? IS THAT EVEN LEGAL?? She lands, thumps, rolls, skids out and bites on her lower lip hard enough that she tastes a little blood. Play it back, what's Kallen saying - they're easy to spot, just look for the red -
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Kurz Weber is many things!
Today, he's very lucky that he was out of earshot.
"Mn, perhaps. And I don't believe there's any water deep enough to worry about in any reasonable distance. Then again, the jungles are full of surpri--"
Speaking of surprises. Ai, similarly clad in a face-obscuring mask, pauses mid-footstep at the sound of the jeep, readying her sword. Mao shouts, sprays gunfire in their direction...
And Ai leaps, darting up and out of sight before Kallen's even given the order to break. She grabs onto a tree branch and vaults up onto it, perched there for a moment before leaping to another, then another, all with more-than-impressive speed and distance. If she can't shake them, she can at least get them off the other two up there.
All the while, she's looking for a good opening, a good angle...
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
The Uruz Team are not in particular disguise. They're in the Mithril battle-dress uniform, an olive button-down shirt with matched pants. They all have a pin over their left breast with the English letters SRT. Some shoulder markings that are probably meaningful to somebody. They're not covering their faces, because that's what the conspiracy is for.
Still, the speed of action might mean it takes a while to make out Sousuke Sagara as the driver of that car.
Mao's instincts tell her there's danger, but she can't respond fast enough. She sees Rin turning toward her in a timeframe she doesn't even entirely perceive. Her body moves with a career soldier's familiarity, jerking herself to the side as the gun comes level.
The bullet misses, barely, cutting into her uniform sleeve and grazing her arm. Mao's balance also fails, though, sending her tipping entirely out of the jeep and down onto the dirt in a heap. "fffck," she grits out. "COORDINATOR!" she screams, the way a fighter of another time might have screamed 'TANK!'.
Ai goes high. Sousuke tracks her with his eyes - Mao missed it - and then mutters, "Two. Uruz Six!"
"Yeah I'm watchin'! Shit. Pinky's got crazy reflexes, she had her gun half out before you had the trigger down. Not seeing the speed, though. Some kind of custom job? Hell, never seen an unenhanced soldier do what blondie's doing, either. Since when do the Black Knights have this much infantry power!?"
"Stop complaining," Mao mutters, rolling herself over and floppily standing up. "Shit. Fuck. OK."
Then she slams her shoulder into the pillar of the Jeep and SCREAMS.
Sousuke endures it quietly. "We have to move," he tells her, letting her try to strip the bark from the trees with invective. He reaches for his side, pulling his trusty Glock from where he put his holster. "Weber, pick one."
"Gonna try my luck on pink," Kurz says, going quiet. "Gimme count of six, then go."
Mao throws herself into the shotgun seat, eyes wide from the pain of dislocating and then un-dislocating her shoulder. "Peggy's gonna kick my ass," she moans.
"Usually Weber's kind of quipping," Sousuke says, steel-grey eyes peering off into the brush where Kallen disappeared. "The pilot of their clawed machine is here. The uniform is coordinated."
"Gonna ask her out?" Mao grits. Four...
"Shortly."
Six. There's a thunderous KABOOM of a high-calibur rifle going off somewhere impressively far away.
Rin will now get to experience figuring out she's about to be hit by a sniper bullet! Good news, it's rubber, so it'll just give you moderate to severe contusions and possibly knock you the fuck out, rather than cut you in half.
As soon as the shot goes out, Sousuke throws the truck into reverse and guns it, throwing his arm behind Mao's seat and following Ai as fast as the vehicle will go.
<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.
In the heat of the moment, every sense tightens up. Unnecessary things are mostly filtered out. This is something certain mercenary figures or lifetime fighters use, keeping their full focus on the threat to their life. Or the mission. It's a little different for Kallen, who gained this skill in the piloting equivalent of unsanctioned, barely regulated cagematches. With machines known to be volatile under the best of circumstances. Where she needed to tune IN the sound of the crowd. Hear the direction their cheers and boos are turning. It's essential for feeling the flow of a fight. Moreso on the occasions someone may have to say, take a dive out of desperation for the extra cash. So SHE hears the scream of 'Coordinator'. And the fear in that scream makes her chest tighten. She's not blind to all the OTHER types of people who aren't well-liked. People the growing Blue Cosmos presence at Ashford would love to stamp out. More potential context for conversations she'll have to have later.
As she's taking cover in the underbrush, she starts slowly making her way around. Nobody's immediately coming her way... looks like they're focused on both Ai and Rin. Who... She's going to need to unpack what they've got going on later, honestly. Thankfully, while she's not some kind of superhuman, she does have enough skills to use the natural cover. She's going to have to follow the truck... Stay out of sight. Wait for an opportunity. If she can yank out the driver when they're looking in the trees above...
It's only as she's coming up to tear him out the side window like a predatory animal, that she's got a clear sight on WHO the driver is. She's internally swearing, at the realization she's fighting Sagara. But also realizing it's better she does it, than Rin or Ai. She'll at least make absolutely sure the takedown isn't lethal, if it gets that far. She cannot in fact KEEP UP with a speeding truck, but being in reverse helps significantly.
It likely doesn't hurt that she seems to dash between trees and underbrush like a shadow. Something barely there in the first place. The explosive report of the rifle... She's got to trust the others for now. She CAN'T have another duel with a sniper. She's completely lacking the tools to get in too close for his weapon, and she... has no idea where he actually is to begin with. Hopefully Rin's got that covered.
But that's still not good news for Sousuke, who has to deal with a person wearing so much red, it... rather looks like she's been soaked in blood, when she's in motion. It won't help that she is. Not planning to speak a singular word within his earshot. She's missing the voice modulation software to hide her obvious accent, and he's heard her speak enough to point it out instantly. At least now she knows... why he always has a feeling of danger around him. At all times.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Melissa Mao just goes ahead and YELLS IT OUT FOR THE WORLD.
In the muddy bush she fell into, Rin Starking gawps. HOW DID SHE KNOW?
She doesn't get up right away. She checks her weapon again to remind herself how many "bullet" she has, because life doesn't give you an ammo indicator.
Where did the others go? Rin peeks upwards.
No HUD. God, she thinks, it's like survival. Life is extreme mode. But --
There's a glittering sparkle from what she assumes is Ai because she saw her moving upwards. Okay, fair enough. Rin crawls forwards, moving gradually. Quietly. Leaving a lot of stuff rustling behind her, because Rin is...
Doing what you ought to do, but not WELL. If this was an infantry training camp in week one she'd probably get marked as a possible squad lead by the first sergeant. IT IS INSTEAD REAL LIFE.
Rin rises upwards at what is probably the worst possible moment for Kurz. She does not rise because she hears Kurz. No, even with his subsonic non-lethal rounds there is only so fast that her Coordinated genome can make her nerves process information. She is in the process of rising to her feet which means that where her head was -
Is now her front -
KABOOM
It's enormous. But if I hear it, Rin thinks, I didn't hey who's slapped OH GOD
What Kurz gets to see is what happens when his enormous subsonic payload smashes directly into the front glacis place of one of these horrible Black Knight death women from the side. The impact is prodigious, and it is enough to lift Rin off of her feet and send her spinning, perhaps in part from some training that taught her how to take a fall. She actually makes a full two-seventy rotation in the air, rising upwards and then landing on her side with another rattle of bush and a horrified gasp that managed, barely, not to be a scream...
OH MY GOD, Rin thinks, even as she transfers her gun from the side of her body that feels like a single titanic bruise to the other side, raising the weapon up to shoot it gangster-style in the direction of that sound.
WHY DOES THIS HURT SO MUCH
POP POP POP
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai leaps from tree to tree as Sagara and Kurz each find themselves a target, cursing silently as Rin earns a rubber bullet to the head. Best to keep the other two off of her, at least...
Kallen strikes, and she grins. Perfect.
A streak of roiling, rippling color comes down from the canopy.
With a heavy THUNK and the keening of metal on metal, the blonde Black Knight is on the hood of the SRT's jeep. Three inches of steel shine like a rainbow; the rest of the longsword is in the vehicle's engine block, which coughs, sputters, and dies as she extracts her weapon.
Paying a quick glance toward the others, she flicks motor oil off the blade, its shine fading as she stands atop the hood, sword held a few inches from Mao's head.
"Shall we?"
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
In the field, you call it like you see it. A Coordinator is a threat that has to be met carefully but immediately. Which means the whole team has to know if you think you see something a normal person just Can't Do.
Two things happen at once, some seconds later. First, Kallen surges out of the trees. Sousuke's busy tracing the bogey in the branches, and Mao is off her game thanks to the pain in her shoulder; he misses it completely until he's already been tugged. No seatbelt. More the fool; she whirls him around and slams him to the ground, and the Jeep might have gone completely out of control if Ai had not very politely solved that problem: By bisecting the engine.
Mao looks at her, her teeth grit in obvious pain, eyes flicking down to that sword.
But she takes the bet anyway, and despite that bad shoulder, puts her weight on them to push her head away from the sword and THRUST her knee up at Ai's wrist, hopefully dislodging the sword completely, or at the very least set it far enough away she then plant her OTHER foot to throw herself BACK out of the jeep, landing less poorly this time. She rises, swinging the gun up to fire a spray of bullets in Ai's direction. "Lookin' bad here!" Mao yells. This close, it's obvious they're all wearing collar mics. "URUZ SIX!"
"She...she moved! She moved so fast, I wasn't--!"
Mao is presumably at this point having to smash sword blows aside with her gun. "DID YOU GET HER OR NOT!?"
Kurz is far enough away that all he has to do is keep low for a bit as Rin's gunfire hits the ridge he's on, muttering, "Her tits have suffered extreme damage, ma'am. ...you'd know more than me about what that'll do."
A sword is currently closing in on Mao's own Nice Rack, which she pushes back against fiercely. "SO YES THEN," Mao yells, and shoves the blade aside to get them both back to neutral posture.
Sousuke, meanwhile, has a furious redhead to deal with. He watches her dash among the trees. His gun's behind him, but he can't reach for it without lowering his guard *completely.* He's got to get it. How does he...
As Mao and Kurz scream in various stages of battle, he tries to rally himself. "Fast," he mutters. Reminds him of his own fighting style in an ARM Slave, actually. Attack, kill, and hide. Which means...
The next time Kallen surges out at him, he's already facing that direction. No quips. No words. Just a fierce punch to center mass to try and send her sprawling, so he can move for his gun. He'd rather go with a knife, but...not his call.
<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.
Unfortunately for Sousuke... Kallen has the knife. When she comes out, she is already brandishing it in a closed grip. The position is familiar. Like that robot, when it went for the Arbalest's joints with its split-fork knife. That experience might make him anticipate a similar move now.
Problem is, she's going for a more important, shorter-term target. Using the knife to 'block' his punch by cutting into his fingers. She wants to make it hard to hold a weapon, like his trusty handgun. And as the knife makes contact, she slides across the arm, digging the blade into flesh as her supporting hand pulls the soldier forward by his wrist.
In what feels like only the time it takes for a single heartbeat, she kicks off the ground, using his unstable body as leverage to twist and climb. She's trying to put him into some kind of messed up headlock, using her legs to choke off his air supply. Something's wrong with this woman, jumping to a maneuver like that. But she seems so perfectly at home, engaging in grappling and submission holds. Strange...
There won't be much time to really think about the meaning of such things though. She's all too aware of how easy it is to pull her off, or slam her into the environment before he's lost enough oxygen to pass out. So she's going to have to try and beat him to it. To grab a sturdy, hanging branch, and swing Sousuke's flailing, unsteady form into the base of a tree, cross-body. Don't want to give him a concussion, or anything life-threatening. She just needs him to stay down a while.
It's not going to be quite that easy. But she's revealing a surprising flexibility, one he might be inclined to question being humanly possible. It couldn't be that all three women in this death squad are different TYPES of Coordinators... right? No, they're not. But given the kind of world Sousuke is used to, it's not hard to make that logical leap. Especially if he's not used to fighting somebody this... slippery.
<Pose Tracker> Rin Starking has posed.
Kurz's diagnosis is correct. Rolling onto her back, Rin does deep breathing and tries to stay prone; to stay low; to stay hidden, to stay SAFE. There are screams she doesn't recognize. That's probably good. PROBABLY...
Kallen is moving out there somewhere. There's the sounds of motion. Rin raises her head a little. Then flat down. URUZ SIX, Rin thinks. Who the hell is URUZ? Is that Federation? Are these Titans?
Rin pushes herself upright with a squint of agony, but... she puts a hand there... it doesn't feel broken... or at least, it only feels, now, MASSIVELY sore and probably swollen. She pants out more breath and gets upwards, gun raised. Moving forwards. Low, careful. Going behind a tree, raising the gun, trying to sight towards where the motion and commotion is...!!
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Mao's knee knocks Ai's sword out of the way just enough to make the opening she needs, prompting Ai to run over the top of the jeep in pursuit. She sweeps her sword in front of her as Mao's rifle lights up, and the sound of a ricochet pings through the jungle as a bullet catches the blade and bounces away. A dive into the brush ensures the rest miss her, and she leaps back up afterward with a thrust, blade's edge parried aside by gun's barrel.
But, now in arm's reach, the blonde grabs the rifle's muzzle with her bandaged arm, yanking it aside--not hard enough to pull it from Mao's grip, but her strength... Coordinator or not, she's certainly no baseliner.
Having opened her up to attack, Ai's sword moves in to strike once more toward Mao's side--but it's a clumsy swing, and the tension on Mao's rifle eases as her concentration shifts to the attack. The swing goes wide, then, as she earns a rifle-butt to the gut, leaving her momentarily stunned.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
He's not expecting the knife. Foolish. Foolish! They should've been fighting to kill from the beginning! He's too comitted to the hit and gets a nasty slice on his fingers, and further carved up the arm. She misses arteries - by fortune of Sousuke's own thinking as the pain sets in more than anything. She goes for a headlock, and he grits his teeth, preparing to drop back to slam her head against the jeep's remains, but -- it wasn't a headlock!? It was some kind of--
She gets him spun around, spinning him into the air and SLAMMING him side-on into the tree. He hits with a WHOOF, and collapses in a heap.
Meanwhile, Mao and Ai hold each other to a standstill. Gun crossing sword, bashing each other aside - but Ai doesn't have as much to worry about from touching the thing, and shoves her weapon aside. It's a mutual finish - Mao takes a nasty gash across her abdomen, and Ai takes a butt-strike to the gut, sending one woman stunned and the other clutching her side. "Fuck. We can't finish it like this," she spits. "Six, status!"
"Pinky's recovered more than I thought. Seven's hurt bad."
"Shit." Still braced, Mao watches Ai, the other woman already recovering. "Uruz Seven, we're leaving!"
He slams his bleeding arm to the ground, betraying himself. "But--"
"...we've held them up as long as we can, soldier. We can't win this."
Face toward the ground, Sousuke hisses, visibly dazed, "Emilia..."
Mao doesn't give him another word: "COVER!"
"Covering," Kurz replies, and bullets start to come down from the mountains. Shoot a branch off a tree, another blows the top entirely off a thinner one...
And then one hits the car's gas tank, and obligingly, because that's definitely how that works, it goes up in a HUGE fireball.
It's not enough to kill anyone. But it IS enough that in the chaos, Sousuke and Mao make their respective ways off into the woods.
The trail is quiet. They're gone.
<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.
She wasn't really going for arteries to begin with, just pain and keeping him from getting a weapon. But Sousuke never needs to know that. Focused on him, she hears his words... Understands why he's here. It's all the better then, that he didn't find her. ...He can't learn Emmy's Black Knights, she needs to defend their friendship. But she won't tell on him either. Not like she knows what group he's with anyway. Just... military.
She's never heard of an Uruz Squad in her life.
And who knows, today's enemy and all that. It's not like he works for the Britannian forces, G-Hound, or Blue Cosmos. There's no way he could...
When a scream goes out for 'cover', she vanishes to a hiding spot. Just in time to blunt a LITTLE of the explosion. She's still dazed when the fire dies down a little. And the Uruz team is long gone. Eventually Ai and Rin will easily enough find Kallen laying against a partially burning tree, deep in her own thoughts. Things to the effect of, 'I'm glad he got away intact. ...Hope I didn't go too rough, but it had to be done.' And also 'This team of mine has a lot to discuss on the road now.'
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai may be strong, but she still feels pain. Her injured arm was already in fairly bad shape, which allowed Mao to regain control and knock the wind out of her. She's doubled over, rising back up when Mao calls for the retreat, and she drops into the brush as bullets start to fly, hands on her head to try and minimize any more damage.
When things have quieted down (relatively speaking; the jeep is on fire, and so is the surrounding plant life) she goes to find her comrades, nursing a bruise to her side and her ego.
Uruz squadron... she'll remember that name, she thinks as she looks off into the jungle, toward where she hopes Emmy's still waiting for them.
Just why were they here?