2011-02-02 - The Earth Daybreak

Tasiilaq is a small town even by Greenlander standards, having a population barely three thousand strong. It is more a point on a map than anything else.

Sermilik, on the other hand, is a Federation shipyard built along the base of Sermilik Fjord. It is fully modern and relatively large, given the remote location; the large inlet itself is used as a shipping lane for supplies, ending at a relatively gentle slope up to the shipyards proper. Unfortunately, the relatively easy naval access works both ways, as it overlooks the sea fairly directly.

Right now Sermilik is bustling. Civilians have been evacuated to shelter further inland (as have the citizens of Tasiilaq) but military personnel have not. Mechanist's wanzers and industrial mobile suits swarm around a wedge-shaped battleship, performing the last finishing touches on the brown machine, silver lettering on it advertising its name - the Kolyma. The large wings of the ship are currently folded back, against its side.

Some of the other industrial suits are holding mobile suit weaponry as a last-ditch defense of the supply depots, but otherwise it's up to the incoming defenses to protect the shipyards.

The Ship of Aurora, unlike Sermilik, has had more than an hour to prepare.

They started preparing about an hour ago, calling in help from their allies and friends on Earth. The submarine is charging in under the waves, approaching the shipyard from the seas. (How they plan to deal with land-based defenses is something of a mystery; the submarine certainly can't go on land.)

"ALL RIGHT!" Elizabeth Liati, at the wooden ship's wheel that is the helm of the Daybreaker, grins. "Their time's up - everyone should be out by now. Let's get this show on the road!" She spins the wheel, setting the Ship of Aurora on a direct path into the inlet. "C'mon, Feds! Let's see what you've got up your sleeves!"

One Hour Ago "The hell?" Marcus (as well as a few other folks) are gathered around the screen as the Ultimatum sent by the Daybreaker is broadcasted. The people of the bar are noticably discomforted by the idea of pirates attacking. Especially MARTIAN pirates. For most earth Sphere folks, Mars is that scary place where BAHRAM comes from. Not everyone knows of the Ship of Aurora or it's limitations on attacking civilians. Marcus just things it's absurb, "Christ, I haven't seen a stunt this retarded since the Clans and their bloody Batchalls... looks like my break is over..." Now The ground shakes as the 60 ton Grigori walks at a calm 30 kph towards the location of the supposed pirate attack. It's transmitting a Trailer IFF, and Marcus soon flicks on the com. "This is Mechwarrior Marcus Gunter to the EFA. I understand you people have a bit of a pirate issue. If you're hiring, I'm willing to help you make your problem go away."

 Marcus Gunter transmits, "This is Mechwarrior Marcus Gunter to the EFA. I understand you people have a bit of a pirate issue. If you're hiring, I'm willing to help you make your problem go away."

 Adam Steiner transmits, "Pilot Gunter, are you bonded by the MRBC?"

 Marcus Gunter transmits, "I am."

 Adam Steiner transmits, "Consider yourself hired by the Alpha Numbers. Your pay will be cleared by the time you touch down. You'll report directly to Captain Lark Straye for mission orders."

 The Auditor transmits, "Pirates, huh."

 The Auditor transmits, "I am on standby if needed."

It takes a total of fifteen minutes from the original call for help, for a blue valkyrie to appear above the shipyard. Circling around once, the Valkyrie switches over to Soldier mode to watch the yard from Above. "Skull Seven has arrived." he transmits as he hovers, gun pod at the ready.....

Badana with jolly roger check, shorts, check, tied off shirt check, and most of all mobile suit check. She's launching the Zudah today rather than one of her other machines as this is a speedy raid. So her machine gets ready to launch. Elizabeth has given them a ride and she waitrs for the right moment to launch. She has to agree with giving the workers time to clear out. They might have grabbed some things of value on the way out, but hey it's better than behaving like say Neo Zeon.

"Fire Dancer to bridge, Zudah launching."

The Ghost Fighter launches heding fo the yard.

Meanwhile Macua has a bit of a goofy grin, a smash and grab raid, this was going to be fun! Maybe she's get a good fight out of the responders.

Face still smudged with pale blue paint, Astrid Stalvern clips herself into the harnass of her new baby. It's an odd fixture in the hanger of the Ship of Aurora, and something that presumably hasn't seen combat in the Earth Sphere in a long time. Chuckling to herself, the woman settles her hands on the familiar controls, flipping through preliminary checks and powerup. With a whirring clunk, the chest of the blue and white Gelgoog Marine AS slides closed. The crimson mono-eye lights up, swinging from side to side, and Astrid smiles, "...Fits like a dream." Stepping out into the hanger, the Gelgoog turns, baring its weapon-loaded backpack as it settles onto the catapult. As it crouches down, the enormous black and white Jolly Roger painted onto its shoulders is easily visible. Inside, Astrid pulls a bandana up over the top of her head, tying it back, then adjusting it so the Skull-N-Crossbows rests over her brow at a jaunty angle. Leaning forward, the woman places her hands back on the controls, "This is Hailstorm. Gelgoog Marine AS Custom, launching!" Riding the catapult, the Gelgoog hurtles out into the frigid Greenland air. In flight, it reaches back, pulling something from its backpack. Swinging this forward, the mobile suit lifts its other hand to the forward grip and works the anti-tank shotgun's action with a familiar sound. clk-CHAK.

This is one of the first times that the Alpha Numbers, at least since Adam Winters has been an active member, has had advance warning of an attack. And it's extremely helpful, because down in the facility, the TSYF-22 is already waiting for the arrival of the pirates. Adam hates pirates. Normally he fights because he has orders, but this time he's fighting because he wants to stomp pirates into the ground. He has the mech's assault rifle at the ready, and is currently just waiting for them to get into the position he needs them to be in so that he can launch his surprise assault. This is going to work.

The Lunar Vector is a sleek green, two-pronged machine. Silvia De Alisia is sitting inside of it on the comfortable seat, her booted feet set in the controls. "This is the Moonlit Butterfly, launching with Soccer Boy and Roses." "Hey!" Pierre cries from the back. "That's not right!" Sirius shakes his head from his position in the Sol Vector. The womans' mouth twitches, even as the three maintain a simple geese-formation.

It was a good thing that Kusuha had been in New York not too long ago. She had already been enroute on a shuttle to depart for Langley when the call had gone out for assistance - it hadn't taken too long for her to convince the pilot to turn the craft around and make an unscheduled boost up into the high atmosphere back towards Greenland instead. He'd cursed and grumbled of course, but this was the sort of thing he was paid to do. The paperwork was probably going to be difficult... which as far as Kusuha was concerned was the pilot's problem to deal with. She was going to have much bigger problems of her own in a moment. The Clacker Engine revs up to full power as the Grungust Type-2 drops free from the docking clamps on the bottom of the transport shuttle. For a machine this big, you can't carry it in the cargo bay normally unless you were using a dedicated super robot carrier, and there just hadn't been one available at the time. But the blue and gold machine doesn't fall far - a single lever pull activates the transformation system, and the G-Hawk's engines fire up at full power as the massive plane mode roars down towards the shipyard below. "Kusuha Mizuha, now arriving!" she shouts, throwing the transformation lever once again as the Type-2 comes screaming out of the sky. She's timed it perfectly - the G-Hawk reconfigures once again, legs folding out and wings shifting around back into the robot's humanoid mode just in time for the boosters to cut in and prevent the Grungust from making a rather large crater in the pavement of the shipyard. Normal street pavement, of course, is no match for the massive tread of a Grungust - asphalt shatters and splinters under even a normal footfall, and windows crack a block away even from this rather light landing. It make for an impressive landing, but Kushua looks back for only a moment. "I can't approve of pirates, I'm afraid! Please leave now - I don't want to have to fight you here!" Kusuha transmits, trying to be as polite as possible. It never hurt to try at least. "We should be fighting together, not against each other!" At least when there was a threat involved... she sighs mentally. Sometimes it seemed like there was either a dire threat to the world... or someone needed to smash something just to keep in practice.

She was supposed to give it back.

She was supposed to make fun of Lloyd for not giving her a machine powerful enough for her tastes. She was supposed to have only piloted it once, and that would be it. But Arian-16 was not going to so easily turn over the Sutherland that was lent out for the raid in the Gobi desert, /especially/ when she has a chance to use it again in much stranger circumstances-- such as an /inlet raid/.

The landspinners squeal and the engine roars as the Boosted Child opens the throttle a little too much a little too fast, the Knightmare Frame screaming out of the hangar with a Float pack just barely bolted onto the frame. The teal-haired pilot has stuffed her helmet into the storage compartment, and as the Sutherland Red Lion screams to a halt on the edge of the concrete pier, she can only grin.

"All right, let's see how this thing operates when I--"grungust

"What. The hell. Is /that/."

The Sutherland's factsphere camera is exposed, rolling around like a singular eye while the four panels that open to expose it bear the blinking red nodes of data aquisition. When it closes, as the Knightmare Frame twists on it's heels to face the incoming once again, the Boosted Child starts to mutter under half-lidded eyes. "Every time I get something cool, someone else..." she mutters under her breath.

Elizabeth Liati put out the call. Tessa Testarossa has been busy working on her own leads and assignments, trying to dig Mithril out of the hole it's in, gathering information. Tonight, they set course through Federal waters toward Tohai; it will be a long trip. But for now, Elizabeth called just in time.

Tessa sits in the Captain's chair of the TDD-1's dark bridge, hands folded in her lap, teeth dug a little into her lip as she watches the soft blue displays light up, displaying maps of the area and the target. Giving them a full hour to prepare...risky, but Captain Liati is right, she thinks. This will allow them to get the civilians out...if they took that chance.

Either way: "Comms, get me the Daybreaker," Tessa calls.

"Aye, ma'am. Comm channel open."

"Captain Liati," the high-pitched voice of Tessa Testarossa says, as she wawtches the field form up. "You've given us quite the challenge today, it seems. The TDD-1 will be here to provide support. Unfortunately, most of my pilots are off-ship at the moment."

It actually /is/ the Ship of Aurora. Lark had expected it to be either someone stealing the name, or Liati piloting a terrestrial submarine rather than bringing /hers/ from Mars. On the bridge of the Kolyma, her lips purse slightly. Well, that doesn't change a lot.

"All hands, prepare for launch!"

The hive of activity around the Kolyma starts to change. Mechanics move away from it as the enormous side-mounted wings extend outward, opening into place and locking into their new sockets with loud slams before they begin to rotate to point the right side up. Warnings begin to sound: something big is taking off, get the hell out of the way.

The base defenses get into position otherwise. Incoming mobile suits get occasional stray fire, but the industrial mechs can't actually hit anything reliably so it's mostly a distraction. The Kolyma is the big threat, and its engines are still whirring up.

Duo Maxwell was excited.

It was a routine, standard mission. It was the kind of thing he'd done a hundred times before; hit a base, sweep it, blow it to shreds and take whatever was left over. But this time, not only was he doing it alongside friends and loved ones and colleagues - which was definitely new to him, since the last time he'd blitzed a base like this was with the five Gundam Pilots of Project Meteor when none of them had known each others' /names/ - but he was doing it in his new and improved beautiful Deathscythe Hell.

It had a fresh coat of paint. It had a fresh shine. It was pretty and black and glossy and everything that was good about the world. He'd spent all night...well, all of his *free time* that night, before Juku got home, polishing it in anticipation of going out again, and now, here he was, sitting underwater in the black machine with its limbs folded up and its wings wrapped around its body.

And, of course, the active camoflague and EWACs and all sorts of other delightfully insane cloaking systems combined with the general water obscuring due to the numerous animals all over the place making radar difficult.

Basically, Duo Maxwell was a well-hidden sonovabitch.

"Well, buddy... back t'basics." Duo pats the control console with a smile and fingers the picture taped to the dashboard, a grin crossing his face. "Remember, we ain't supposed t'do nothin' stupid, or we'll get punished. So don't let me do anything stupid, y'hear?"

Deathscythe Hell does not respond, which is probably merciful, because it means he hasn't lost his ever-loving mind yet. Duo shakes his head and grins. There he goes again, talking to something that can't talk back. What was he *expecting* these days? For Deathscythe to suddenly start offering advice?

...maybe he should talk to Juku about this predilection to expect his robot to do something one of these days.

Oh well.

"Alright budddy... HERE WE GO!" Duo chirps, jamming on the thrusters. Deathscythe Hell's invisible green eyes light up as it launches out into the sky, water dripping off every part; its wings suddenly spread wide, casting a shadow across a group of GMs who had been standing guard.

One of them even manages to say 'it's a gun-' before the scythe flashes through them in an explosive ambush.

"Sorry, guys - jus' yer bad luck that you had t'see my face! But anybody who sees me's got a one-way trip t'meet his maker!"

"Incoming transmission from the Tuatha de Danaan, Captain." "On screen, MAKI." Elizabeth answers Tessa with a nod. "We hear you, Captain Testarossa. If you don't have pilots...show me what /you/ can do!" And, with a laugh, she spins her ship's wheel and ends transmissions. The Daybreaker arcs through the inlet, circling under the Kolyma.

"Huh... didn't expect them to have something /that/ big ready for us... damn, must have just finished the thing." The Kolyma is unexpected... but it's only seconds before the cocky grin returns to Elizabeth's face. "Well - let's see what we can do before they get it going! MILCH!"

In the missile bay, a huge blond man looks up from a sudoku puzzle. "Yeah?" "Prepare the water-to-air torpedos!" "Aye aye." And he begins pumping torpedos into torpedo tubes at a surprising rate. Elizabeth waits a few seconds. Then: "OPEN FIRE!" And the torpedo tubes open, sending a flurry of torpedoes up and into the air at the still-launching Kolyma.

With the issue about contracts and not getting the EFA taskforce to shoot him settled and out of the way, Marcus powers his Battlemech up to combat level and throttles up to a crisp fifty kph. It doesn't take long for his screen to start identifying IFFs and sorting them out by color. Green for friendlies. Red for hostiles. Marcus scans the erupting battlefield for a target, but Duo calls him out over the Trailer com and a vein pops out of Marcus' forehead. "What the fuck is that dumbshit boyfriend of Juku's trying to do?" It doesn't take long to see the Black Gundam chopping it's way through the defenders while it's pilot slings insults at him. More and more the vein pops out of his head as he swings his battlemech around, "Alright, you wanna rumble? Then let me show you how we do it /OLDSCHOOL/!" Smoke and fire spit from the right arm mounted missile launcher as a flight of LRMs fly out over long range.

The Valkyrie, still hovering in the air to generate a moderate amount of heat, was still having a few problems with sensors, as the heat needed was far above the current temperature. So naturally, Max wasn't seeing much on sensor. "Blast it." he says wiping away at the instruments. However, he spots Astrid's Gelgoog... barely, since his glasses are fogging up too. Astrid should be able to hear the bark of the Valkyrie's gunpod fairly easily... especially in THIS weather.

If there is anything the Divine Crusader command is good at, it's figuring out how to bite the EFA and the A-LAWS in the ass. Upon hearing the rumor of an invasion that was about to occur in greenland, they sent out the fastest unit they had available at the time.

Ascian, on earth due to some severe talks happening between the upper ranks and Mars command -- and kind of stuck as somewhat of an ambassador for god-knows what reason -- was decided to be the one to be tasked with /assisting/ the pirates. It probably had to do with the fact that he was slowly starting to grow into a higher rank, for he was given command of some basic BAHRAM units.

So, the Amenthes, an Orital Frame of the BAHRAM army, is coming in hot, its wings aflame with the ember-like sparks of Metatron energy - dancing behind it like embers. A casual flow spreads through the unit. "Damnit, I should have taken the Ark Hammer up on that offer to rest. But how was I supposed to know they'd just send me right back to Earth? This is getting ridiculous." He was still tired - very much like last day, during which he luckily had not gotten shot at.

"Arriving at the battle theater, sir." Suddenly, on the giant overhead map of the area - mostly water tiles, an explosion of purple appears - followed by a chibi version of the Amenthes, colored in yellow for the convenience of indicating it was with the Katharon troops, but could not be directly controlled. 'Reinforcements have arrived'. Appears in big letters.

The Amenthes' wings shrink somewhat, Metatron crystals pulling bcak into the folds of the dozen bit-like extensions, leaving it afloat with the feather-like crystals at the bottom-back of its pointy legs. It just remains afloat, looking at the enemies present - whilst Ascian tries to figure out who to go after. But during that time, at least he sends out a message; "To the Daybreaker forces - this is Ascian Luddite, of the BAHRAM army. I am here to assist." Now let's hope Katharon or the EFA doesn't make use of this moment to park all their units together next to the yellow unit to try the 'talk to//convince' option.

Adam would find an Zudah, it's an old zeek machine rumored to be too damn dangerous to taker to full speed, yet here one is. Someone allied to Katharon's either found or been making more of them. Adam woudl find this one is speeding at Adam's machine it's also opening fire with a machine gun of some sort. The pirate machine likely was picked for the nature of the raid, it's pilot also says not a thing over the radio as it closes. It seems the pilot may have other ideas as it's closing as didn't the Zudah also have a rep as a close infighter machine?

What was Duo doing? Well, he liked Marcus, that's what he was doing. And that meant he wasn't going to kill Marcus - which meant he was going to get out of this fight with an absolute minimum of blood on his hands. As Marcus's missiles come sweeping in, Deathscythe Hell slides to the side, too fast to be tracked by their tracking systems or accounted for by manual aim; only the briefest edge of the explosion touches the wing of Deathscythe Hell, slightly melting the tip of the wing.

"Awww, that's *it*, old-timer! I'm gonna kick yer ass so hard yer gonna need Juku t'put more'n yer mech back t'gether!" Duo chirps, an oddly dissonant cheer behind his voice as Deathscythe Hell vanished into thin air. He was really, really happy - really happy, that Marcus had gone for it. The less blood he had on his hands...well, the less the nightmares would wake him in the middle of the night, when Juku was asleep or working on something in the hangar. The less faces he'd see, declaring him the monster he knew he was inside.

Deathscythe Hell suddenly appears behind Marcus - so fast, it's like it's teleporting! - that huge double-scythe rising into the sky. Duo's grin is easy to envision; a cocksure grin under a baseball cap as the scythe rises into the sky like twin glowing green crescent moons, and falls like a guillotine in a single swift slice.

Oh that's not good. The Raptor turns around in time to find itself being pegged with machinegun fire from the pirate, "That's it!" The Raptor's arms come out to the side, "Enjoy it while it lasts!" He transmits, "Because I will be your death, pirate scum!" Adam is, at the moment, not a happy camper. His ambush plan failed and his mech is already starting to take damage. He drops his assault rifle back into both hands of his suit and begins to advance on the Zudah, slowly, methodically, while holding down the trigger on the unfired machine gun, spraying every bullet that he has in the magazine at his target, intending to rip it to shreds as he does so.

Tch, sometimes earth Sphere machines can be such a bloody pain to deal with, especially when they pull of bullshit like this. Thankfully, Marcus is kind of expecting Duo to jump him from behind. Duo hasn't exactly been secret about his love for ambush tactics over the Trailer com after all. The 60 ton grigori twists around to the left, protecting the weaker rear armor using the arm of his battlemech as he triggers the ER Small laser mounted in his back. The laser flashes through the air, narrowly missing Duo as his beam scythes burn away at the sturdy armor of the Heavy 'Mech. "Don't write checks your ass can't cash kid!" Jumpjets flare as the battlemech leaps into the air and spins around as more missiles (this time of the SRM variety) stream out of his left missile tube.

The Kolyma has not even moved yet except to lock its wings into place. It is a terribly easy target for arc-fired weaponry as it continues to make no attempts whatsoever to get out of the way, but it's durable enough to withstand it too.

"Get me into the air!" Lark demands; her pilot, a temporary one who is still technically in training and should not be the helmsman in combat, nods. "Full power to engines! All hands prepare for liftoff!"

The Kolyma's engines hum loudly. Some reddish-orange sparks emit from the rear end of the Guyana-class battleship, and with a roar, it lifts off and forward. First launch: a success! Next step: "Communications, get me a link to the Ship of Aurora. Combat, see if you can lock on to something underwater."

Elizabeth, if she accepts the call, might be surprised to see another woman sending the transmission. "Kolyma to Daybreaker. What the hell are you doing off Mars?" Lark asks, bluntly. "I hope you realize you're not exactly well-liked out here!" Off-camera, one of her gunners turns and gives her the OK sign; she nods to the young man.

One of the missile launchers' covers slides back, the front left one. It fires a series of missiles almost straight up, but once they've ascended far enough they turn and then drop, accelerating downward at the submarine.

Astrid skims over her readouts as she ascends over the Ship of Aurora, then dives in towards the town proper. She glances over her ammunition counts and her energy readouts, and that's when something rips into the side of the Gelgoog Marine, scoring black marks in its freshly painted blue and white armor. The gunpod fire scores along the right side and then down the backpack, punching several dings into the casing of the bulky ... object.. stored there. In the cockpit, Astrid bares her teeth, "Who the hell..!" Skim skim, the red mono-eye swings back and forth once, then focuses on the blue valkyrie with its smoking gunpod barrel. The woman's scowl becomes a predatory grin, like a wolf baring fangs, as she pushes the controls in. The Gelgoog swings around, its thrusters flaring brightly as it swings wide after the blue Skull Seven, "You're gonna regret that! I just finished painting this!" She's not bringing up her weapon. In fact, the Gelgoog lowers its shotgun and brings its free hand back. The spikes on its forearm shield swivel down over the knuckles, and she swings high, right for the vulnerable and delicate sensory instruments that make up the Valkyrie's head, "YOU just PISSED ME OFF!"

"Whoa." Silvia says, staring at the Amenthes, especially with the crystal-like things that let it - float, she thinks? She's lost staring at it for a few moments, until a voice barks over her radio, "Butterfly!" Silvia squeaks. "Commander?" "Formation. L-M-S." The voice calls again, and Silvia pales slightly, before nodding. "Formation, L-M-S: Codename: Beautiful shape!" "Nenshin!" Sirius says, his fingers tightening on the controls in the Solar Vector. "Gattai." Pierre says, teeth gritting together. "Go, Aquarion!" Silvia cries. The three vectors sweep up into the air, a triangle-shape energy field, rippled with colors, forms around them. This holds for about a few seconds, before all three vectors start dramatically shifting, before the Aquarion Luna appears, floating in the air, the green bow covered. "Ohhh..." Silvia mo-- And for rating purposes, the rest of this paragraph was cut. "Right!" Silvia says, voice shaky due to reasons(tm). "Aquarion!" The robot shifts, twirling around to create a glowing green energy arrow in the bow, which when released with a twang at Ascian, does not actually fly out like an arrow, but more of a beam.

Everyone seems to be going after Max's Valkyrie with melee techniques. He finds it odd that, even though he's in mid=air, instead of shooting at him, the Gelgoog sees fit to rocket up and take a swing at the sensor head of the Valkyrie. If Astrid could see into max's cockpit, she'd see him smirking. "Oh come on. Punching the Valkyrie in the face only means I'll just use backup cameras." However, while he's talking, he leans the Valkyrie to it's right, effectively dodging the punch and the mech's trajectory, only to turn and fire it's gun pod again, this time at the mech's side.

Kusuha takes in the battlefield for a moment - the best place to strike was where you were going to be able to do the most good. You just had to focus until your target was in sight, and then take them down as quickly as possible. Still, finding a good target in this fracas wasn't all that easy. The enemy mothership was a good target, however. That would have to do. Kusuha pushes the throttle forward, the Grungust matching her motion as it begins to run. The massive robot's feet shake the ground as it picks up speed, moving rapidly across the port and towards the harbor beyond. If it was just the one ship, then forcing it off would help to ensure that the enemy had to retreat or lose their logistical support. As it reaches the harbor's edge, Kusuha pulls the transformation lever and gives a nice, hearty shout. Ryusei would be proud of it, if he were around to hear it. ...of course, his not being around to hear things like this was a major part of why she was with Bullet now, but DETAILS. "CHAAAANGE! G-HAWK!" The G-Hawk blasts off into the air, ascending above the battlefield once again. Her senses extended out to the limit, looking for anything that might be ready to intercept her on route to the Daybreake- And then Aquarion happens. Kusuha turns beet red in response. "...don't you think t-that's a l-little inappropriate, you three!?!" she states, not even able to look at the machine. Some days having a psychic power is not something that you want. "I mean... can't you... do that when there's no one else... I mean... that's just..." Blush. Blush. BLUSH. Tearing her attention away from GATTAI (if that's what the kids are calling it these days) the blue haired girl scans the water for a moment - and there was the sense of... something. A faint shadow, perhaps? No, it was too regular, and she didn't sense the 'presence' that something like a whale might give off. Which meant it might be a problem! Reaching up, Kusuha flips a switch and deals with the whole 'what exactly is it' the best way she can. A bomb seperates from one of the Type-2's wings, spinning about as it falls nose first into the water and explodes nearby to the Tuatha De Danaan.

Woah! Another explosion hooks the chunk of wingtip that he just wasn't fast enough to get out of the way, melting the paint and cracking the metal along the armored shield. Duo curses under his breath as he slides away once again, spinning his scythe in one hand; that kind of complex manipulation was normally outside anything such a non-GFighter Gundam could do, but that was his skill, his connection to his best friend, reinforced by the woman he loved into something vaguely akin to a nightmare of Gundanium alloy and beams.

"C'moooon, you can do better than that!" Duo jokes, sliding between the buildings as cover - knowing full well that if Marcus decided to shoot the buildings with his missiles, he'd wind up paying out of his pocket and with a hit to his rep as a Feddie. What a dirty trick from...a self-professed assassin. Okay, it kind of fit.

"Want me t'help you find yer step? Maybe all that time in th' wheelchair's kinda made it a little tough - but don't worry, I'll remind ya how it's done!"

And, admittedly, he was having fun poking at the old bear, all in good fun.

Deathscythe Hell suddenly leaps over one of the buildings, planting its foot on the face of a conveniently-placed GM and leaping into the air. It descends on Marcus with both hands around its scythe, the twin blade swinging downwards towards the missile launcher. Time to cause the old mechjock some maintenance problems!

Once again the Aquairon team would get a strange present is watching them quite suprised as they Gattai and it tries to look away. Clearly whoever this is didn't mean to but the groups' going off like a nuke to anyonw with the ability to see such things. This leads to MAcua's machine actually suttering out going into a dive and totally saving her from the well aimed burst of fire from Adam which would have other wise hit her. The Zudaha hit the ground somewhat hard. She turns bright red again and sighs, why did a friend have to be here on the other side today. She's still got the raid to preform and this TSF pilot whose going off about pirates. She makes no reply prehaps he's got a point or she's just distracted by her friend who at lest from the newtype's point of view needs to stop doing that!

The Zudah pushes it self off of the ground and has no time to recover it's rifle, it pulls the bazooka off it's back and fires a shot off at Adam, before it tries to get up and then recover the rifle. Macua meanwhile keeps muttering. They need to get a room, they need to get a damn room!

"Missiles detected. Tracking confirmed." "Thanks, MAKI. ESTER! Deal with it." The pale, young-looking girl who is the first mate nods, manning the gun controls. With the practiced care that marks the Sea Witches of Mars (read: a type of Coordinators), she aims the guns...and shoots down all of the missiles with them. Because you can do that.

Then, communications open. Elizabeth grins. "Hello there, captain! We're here because you have goods we want. Maybe we're not well-liked out here...but y'know, I've never cared what other people think about me." She pumps a fist...and then stops dead, as sensor pick up something else, which MAKI shows picture-in-picture: Aquarion doing its thing.

For several seconds, Elizabeth, Ester and the rest of the bridge crew - currently the cat Clara and the dolphin Poipoider - watch the show, open-mouthed. Then, at last, Poipoider says, "Is she for hire?" Ester, meanwhile, has turned beet-red. Clara is looking up at Poipoider with an annoyed look, and Elizabeth just shakes her head. Then, back to Lark. "Sorry about that. Where were we?"

Pause. "Oh, right. Show me what you've got, captain! The Ship of Aurora's never backed down - and we won't start just because we're on Earth!" She draws her cutlass, pointing it forward. "MILCH! Launch the large tubes!" And then the sword is sheathed and she wheels the ship around, keeping it circling under the Kolyma in the hopes off being a harder target. A larger set of torpedos fires off from the Ship of Aurora, while Poipoider slinks off the deck on some mysterious errand.

The Gelgoog Marine gets a chest full of gunfire. Thankfully, the torso is more heavily armored than the limbs, and while the armor is cratered and scarred, it hasn't punched through to any vital components. Whirling on the Valkyrie, Astrid twists her controls, swinging out with the spiked fist again. With a frown, she does some mental calculations. It's fast, chances are it's weakly armored, so it gets more speed. Her preferred tactics of mingling melee with ranged weapons isn't going to work out so well. The scowl disappears, then, and the Gelgoog's verniers flare, hurtling the machine sideways. Its spiked knuckle guard flips back, and something swings up from the backpack, extending a handle. The left hand grips this solidly, swinging a six-barrelled monstrosity up to aim at the offending variable mecha, "You know, you're right. Punching you ain't gonna work. You wanna play with guns? Let's play with guns."

God damnit, hiding behind the buildings he's supposed to protect. What a sneaky, underhanded tactic that Marcus-- Wholeheartedly approves of. He /is/ a mechwarrior after all, and in his 40 years of service, he has been forced to fight in plenty cities. it's just how it is in the Inner Sphere. Thinking quick, Marcus throws his bachine into reverse and turns as he takes a step back, managing to yank his arm back just in time. The torso swivels around and that Face Laser mounted in the Grigori's head opens up, melting away at duo's Gundam with it's gatling laser. "I'm just taking it easy on you kid cause your girlfriend would take apart my 'Mech if I didn't." 5r

Then the Grigori hunkers down and takes arm with that big cannon mounted on the shoulder, "I'm sure she won't mind if I wound your ego though." And then-- OH GOD IT BURNS!

The Amenthes is floating perfectly still for the longest time, whilst Duat - its Artificial Intelligence - gives clear imagery of all the visible combattants present on the field. His gaze is quickly shifting between them, until he suddenly is captivated by the merging of the Aquarion - three vidwindows shifting into a single one like a triangle, and locking into place. "What the..." The young man mutters, moving a hand to move his blue hair out of the way of his single eye that is not currently covered in bandages.

Duat immediately reports, "High energy signatures being read from the unit. Biosignatures are highly eratic and..." The unit cuts off. Ascian knew the rest though, he had that kind of 'feed' into the sensors of the unit. He kind of raises his hand to his mouth, covering it, his eyes wide. "Oh my..." He mutters, before turning his attention on the newly formed unit. The newly formed unit which is... firing at him!?

His hand quickly moves back to the half-orb controls of the Orbital Frame, sending the flow of energy through his unit that carries his bidding - that causes the unit to beautifully dodge the attack, hands flowing to the right. Like a dancer. It then quickly halts again, and its eyes suddenly burn in red - showing through the black hawk-like helmet that makes up a large portion of its head.

"What was that?" Ascian demands to know. The A.I. replies: "A high energy beam, sir. I recommend caution.". The young man nods acknowledging and pushes his whole body a bit forwards - held back by the seatbelts - and sends his unit straight forwards along the green beam which was scorching the sky.

"I don't know who you are--" He starts a direct audio-visual transmission towards the Aquarion, in case they wanted to accept it. "-- but you just messed with the wrong person." The bandages on his show clearly, he is not in top form. His hair however is perfectly neat. As are his clothing. He and Sirius in fact look... somewhat alike in a ways. If only it wasn't for that bandaged eye - making him so asymetrical.

Amenthes moves forth at extreme velocity, whilst its tail-feather like tendrils receive a charge of energy that passes from the core of the unit towards them, sending pearls of energy into the air between them. A sphere begins to form, and as the Amenthes gets close to the Aquarion, the sphere suddenly becomes like a sphere of pure fire. It isn't. It's compressed space holding within it a massive explosive power... but the energy is so quantiful that it purses through like little flakes... fiery red feathers. And it is that ball of 'fire' that gets chucked straight at the Aquarion as Amenthes pulls up before coming in contact with the enemy unit!

The only problem with that line of thinking is that Max Jenius isn't a grunt Valkyrie Pilot. He freuqently underestimates his own abilities quite often and usually 'wings it' when in the cockpit. This is one of those times. As soon as the Gelgoog pulled back, after punching the Valkyrie on the arm, Max had already activated the transformation of the Valkyrie. By the time Astrid began firing, he was in fighter mode and was no longer in the place where she fired. However, once she stopped firing, she'd find max above her, in gerwalk mode firing a missile at her mech...

OH GOD IT BURNS!

For all his dodging around, all it takes is one mistake to cause him serious problems. The cannon catches Deathscythe right on its shoulder quite definitely explosive; the plasma rifle melts clean through the armor, leaving a hole right through the wing and the gundanium arm hanging off by a metal threat. Duo groans and slices it off with the scythe as he tries to get control of his friend - and once again Juku was going to *murder* him - and run away before Marcus can completely devastate his unit. Crap, crap, crap - that was more firepower than he was expecting, and that was his mistake. Sure, it wasn't lethal - it was nothing lethal - but it could've been. It could've very easily been an enemy shooting at his chest, and it could've easily left him dead in the water...or made Juku cry like she did that night.

He'd made a promise. He was supposed to be better than this.

"Oh, yer gonna pay fer that, old man!" Duo promises as the scythe is suddenly inverted, held like some sort of insanely huge tonfa in the only working arm. Deathscythe dances between buildings once again, carefully keeping out of Marcus's reach until just the right moment-

-and then passes right by him without an attack, and backflips off another GM, cartwheeling into the sky and inverting the strike. The scythe's vernier thruster suddenly triggers in a creative attack as Duo's flip comes full turn, bringing him down onto Marcus - and then away again in the space of a second, before Marcus can keep him in melee, because Duo knew just how deady the old man was in *that* arena.

The Kolyma ascends, some of the rear-most launchers emitting not missiles but chaff. It seems to be enough; Elizabeth's missiles chase down the drifting flakes and electronic emitters and not the Kolyma, though the explosions are close enough that Lark /still/ feels them in her chair.

Lark may be getting it picture-in-picture, too, judging by the blank-faced stare at something not Elizabeth on the screen. She, however, is not the sort of person to turn red when faced with it.

"Very well, Captain," Lark says back, before thumbing off the communications link. "Can we strafe the Daybreaker with lasers?"

"No ma'am," Lark's temporary gunner says. "Not while it's under water. If it surfaces, we might be able to get a shot off, but with the seamist in the way..."

Lark grunts, tapping her knuckle against the seat chair. "Forgot about the diffusion problem. Fire a whole missile box at her. We're moving inland, over the shallows. Charge the lasers. If she surfaces to avoid grounding, let loose."

The Kolyma banks, moving over the shallowest part of the inlet, tempting Elizabeth with clear shots if she follows into the shallows. One of the rear-mounted missile boxes launches an entire flight of GN missiles, the water around the Daybreaker - or where Lark thinks it is, anyway - blasting into high plumes.

"Ahhh, so beautiful and graceful..." Sirius says, watching the Amenthes floating as it gracefully dodges to the side. "Just like a dancer, one both beautiful and strong..."

Pierre and Silvia both cut in at the same time. "KNOCK IT OFF!" "Right, he's got beams, let's see if he can deal with two of them!" Silvia says, the 'arrow' of the aquarion splitting off into two cannons to transmit.

This time around Adam is focused and ready, ahd as the massive bazooka shot comes flying in towards him, he quickly dodges to the left and it sails right past him, "Two can play at this game!" The assault rifle get stowed and he breaks out the armor's big gun, "We could sit here and trade shots all day, or you can just surrender youself and be put on trial for piracy. I leave the choice to you, but know that I won't hesitate to destroy you!" The Raptor drops to a knee and the rail gun comes to bear, as Adam takes the few seconds he needs to sight in on Macua's armor and unleash the massive slug from his mech's primary weapon, sending the projectile at near light speed straight at the pirate mecha.

The trick with that is that the Chaingun is a fully automatic weapon. So while the Valkyrie transforms and speeds away from incoming fire, Astrid simply twists her Gelgoog in midair, following the nimble aircraft in its escape arc. She only lets up on the trigger when a missile ejects and speeds down at her from above. Releasing the handle on the chaingun, the weapon swings back while Astrid brings up her Gelgoog's right hand, and the shotgun clutched in it. This is fired once, filling the air around the missile with pellets. That's so much more effective than wasting a full clip of machine gun fire on a macross missile massecre, isn't it? The action is worked, ejecting the spent shell right before Astrid tucks the weapon back into her Gelgoog's backpack. Verniers flare, and the machine rockets up after the valkyrie, right into the smoke and fire from its missiles. This obscures the machine completely for a second or two. Where did she go? What weapon is she preparing now? VRRRvrrvrrvrr. Wait, what kind of weapon makes THAT noise? The answer comes a breath later when the Gelgoog Marine AS Custom explodes from the smoke cloud, weilding a bulky object in its left hand. Belching smoke from one side, it consists of what appears to be an engine casing and a long narrow, blunt blade with glowing plasma spikes on it. Depressing the trigger, these spikes start spinning, and Astrid starts laughing as she swings repeatedly after the blue Valkyrie with a GIANT CHAINSAW.

Tessa sits on the bridge of the de Danaan, watching the battle unfold. The Toy Box simply drifts along. Truth be told, as a /ship/ it's better suited to carrying pilots or blowing shit up; this whole support fire thing is not realy...her. For one thing, the de Danaan is not meant for direct combat; rather it is best suited to avoiding it like the plague.

"Captain, Grungust, incoming!" the sensor officer announces, and Tessa frowns as the data from the sensor pods start filtering down. "...shouldn't be able to see us," Tessa decides.

And then it drops bombs. "Tch," Tessa mutters, as the ship rattles under the bursts. "Psychic," she grumbles. Tessa herself is hard to pin down; nobody else is quite so lucky.

"EMFC to combat power," she announces, fingers finding her braid, tracing through it and soon winding it up toward her lips, chewing the strands slowly. Something like this...there's only so much she can do, but still.

"Load type-31 buoys to aquatic release bays four and seven; get the ARM Slaves in the water. Don't worry about the ship, get them to shore and see about getting what they can to a secure area while the defenders are busy with the overt operation."

"Aye, ma'am!" Mardukas calls, and things pass down the line, the crew finding it coming easy once again. But Tessa can't say she enjoys the feeling of her ship being in combat, not now. She takes a slow breath. "Fire."

Soon, Kusuha may detect a pair of buoys suddenly bursting to the surface, floating there innocently.

And then there's missile locks and they shoot out of the sea on rockets to drill her arms off.

Marcus growls as he brings his missile launchers up to track the quickly approaching Deathscythe, only to let out a curse as it leaps right past him. He quickly switches back to his rear laser and releases another shot, but in the second it took to do that, Duo is already airborne and coming down atop him with his beam scythe. The Grigori stumbles as the blade carves open the left shoulder, exposing machinery and burnt myomer bundles beneath. marcus quickly corrects and plants his leg beneath him for stablization. "You're the one that brought this on yourself kid. don't bitch to me because your toy got broken." The jumpjets flare again as the Grigori rises into the air and arcs overhead with all the grace of a rocket propelled brick. then it starts to descend. Right on top of Duo. "DFA, BITCH!"

More stunned that a mech has a chainsaw than worry how badly it's gonna hurt the Valkyrie, Max actually sits there for a moment, which is all the Galgoog needs to bite into the left arm of the valkyrie. Max is still pondering why she didn't say 'this is my boomstick' over the open channel. However, Max ultimately shrugs. "Well, chainsaw or not, you're not the only one with a machine gun." That's when the Gun pod fires a longer burst of sustained fire at the Gelgoog...

"Captain, numerous missile signatures detected." Elizabeth grits her teeth. "All right...evasive maneuvers. All hands brace!" Elizabeth charges the Ship of Aurora directly for the shipyard's docks, using them as cover from the missiles. It's far from perfect...but the docks keep many of the missiles from locking, thanks to IFF readouts, and only a few go into the water to blast the submarine.

"She wants us in the shallows, eh? I think I remember this woman. Well - we can't just do what she wants!" The Daybreaker nears the surface...but it does not enter the shallows. Instead, Elizabeth uses the clear shots for a different purpose. "She can probably outpower us.../if/ she can run at full capacity. But I don't think she can. Her crew must be new - they probably can't handle that engine. Still...Ester, aim for the engines. Poipoider, prepare yourself." "Aye!" And somewhere on the ship, Poipoider also salutes.

And then, a huge harpoon is launched from the Daybreaker up at the Kolyma. If it hits, the ship suddenly begins to move full reverse, pulling out towards the sea. Meanwhile, the harpoon crackles with electricity, trying to overpower the Kolyma's engines so that it can't pull back quite as efficiently - after all, that big flying ship looks powerful.

The reason Astrid didn't say 'This is my boomstick' is because it's not a boomstick. It's a chainsaw. Calling it a boomstick would be silly. When the Valkyrie tries to open up on her again, at such close range, the woman twists her controls and likewise turns the Gelgoog Marine out of the GERWALK-mode's firing arc. The beam saw is shifted to the left hand, and the right reaches back while she's evading the spray of gunfire. When she produces it again, it's ... the anti-tank shotgun. And now, the seemingly-fanged woman grins, "...Who needs a machine gun," One-handed, the weapon is thrust at the Valkyrie. Preferably, right against it, but at this range it doesn't matter quite so much. She pulls the trigger, "...When I have a fifty-millimeter anti-tank shotgun?!"

"Bitchin's what kids do - I'm makin' you a promise!" Duo chirps, "I /promise/ yer gonna pay fer it!" He laughs as Deathscythe Hell careens out of the way of the DFA, the Grigori explosively landing behind him with dust and debris and all those other nasty things. It was too close, Duo considers - too close for his own comfort, because he could very easily have been crushed under that big thing and then he'd be in the hospital for a very, very long time...if he even survived, he thought darkly.

And then Macua gets taken out or at least seriously damaged by Adam Winters, and suddenly, it's not a very funny game anymore. Suddenly, somebody he cares about, a dear friend, may have just gotten killed...because he's there, because he was there, because he was on the battlefield spreading his curse.

To say the freakout is epic is completely inaccurate. It's a quiet sort of thing; the radio is flipped off, as Deathscythe Hell vanishes behind some of the buildings with its cloaking system and radar jammers. Duo's head sinks into his hands quietly, and he starts to murmur. It was all his fault. It was all his fault. It was all his fault.

Playtime was over.

Suddenly, he gets serious. Duo's radio remains off as Deathscythe Hell emerges from the buildings, wings spreading wide; he goes straight for the throat, right for the Grigori's...whatever passes for a head, running along with verniers in full. Macua might be hurt because he was too busy screwing around, and while he wasn't about to kill his friend Marcus, he would never be able to forgive himself if he didn't stop joking and start *fighting*.

The beamscythe swings around, stopping behind the head; the wings pop open wide all of a sudden, verniers that were once going forward suddenly pulling backwards, and the scythe is dragged along in a very good imitation of a guillotine as Duo tries to remove Marcus from the fight *right now*.

No more kids' games. Not with a friend hurt.

"Warning! Incoming beam!" Ascian, believing this to mean that a single beam was coming, dodges out of the way by taking a hard right... running straight into the second beam. All he manages is to call out 'shit!' before the heat of the green glow scars the unit and causes the armor plating on its right leg and arm to suddenly look black... or entirely fall off.

An indicator clearly indicates that he'd just taken a severe hit, and the shield of compressed space that kind of invisibly was always surrounding the unit was showing some severe anomalies. "This isn't good Duat..." Ascian whispers, and sends the Amenthes a bit further away from the enemy unit. "If we stay at a bit more of a distance..." He mutters.

The crystals of Metatron suddenly push out from the wings, creating a quick 'burst' of red feather-like embers to dart outwards from the unit, whilst it raises both arms which shift into the shape of a pair of rifles. Each rifle quickly gets aimed down at the Aquarion's lower-midsection, where Ascian believed one of the connections of the unit to be, and sends a twosome of red-energy streams straight for it.

Macua Huitl is so having a talk with Sil if she lives through this, but with the mental distraction ringing in her mind still bothering her? She's ntofast enough at this point. Adam would get a reply the voice is computer distorted but female.

"You think I'd go back?"

The machine is caught bt the slug it rips into the mecha but somehow prehaps due to Kid's upgraees the machine surives the hit. She's hit pretty badly and if it were a living thing there'd be blood and guts everywhere, but it's not that. There's arcs of elecrical energy from severerd ower lines, some hydrolics or the modern version of them. It does however pull the anti ship rifle out, the damage machine manaes to line up a shot and opens fire firing a pair of rounds at the Raptor, she's managed to head shot another Raptor before so who knows what may happen today. If Duo's paying attention Macua's mech is still active just not transmitting at the moment.

Yup, that shot made the Valkyrie drop like a stone. Unfortunately for Astrid, Max was pretty good at getting the Valkyrie under control. Switching back to Soldier mode gave him a bit more control under the circumstances, but once he had control again, he opened fir with his gunpod, yet again... much like Astrid's own machine gun....

"I'm not giving you a choice." The Raptor's pilot replies, staring down the barrel of the massive anti-tank rifle. This is going to take everything he's got, and he moves forward towards the damaged mech, his own Raptor twisting and moving enough that the massive anti-ship round barely clears him, leaving scorch marks along the armor, "That was close...I'll give you that much." He says, the rail gun still kept at the ready, as he begins to fire it at the damaged mech, continuing to press his attack, "But I will not allow you to escape!" He fires a shot to punctuate this, "You'll go to prison and rot!" Another shot, "You and your kind are scum, and I'm making it my goal in life to make sure that every last one of you is in prison...OR DEAD!" And he fires the last three shots from his rail gun before the weapon overheats and shuts down.

Well, it was either an enemy sub, or some sort of extremely pissed off mecha whale that had decided that it was going to begin popping rockets off at her. Kusuha wasn't sure which, but she was willing to at least take a bet on it being the former. The two rockets erupt from the ground, launching upwards and sprouting drills of all things, scraping along the hull of her machine for a moment before spiraling away. The Grungust's armor is too difficult to break for a weak attack like that, but the G-Hawk's configuration had less armor than one might expect from a super robot this size. On the other hand, perhaps her opponent didn't know what they were dealing with either. The G-Hawk looks like a bomber from far away - they might not be expecting a transforming robot. Which might work to her advantage! Kusuha nods once, and pulls the transformation lever... and the Grungust snaps around, resuming its normal shape before plummeting down towards the water. The wind whistles around the descending machine as the water looms rather closely below. It wasn't the most graceful attack, but it might well punch the machine down through all of the water and to the point where the attacker was located. And thus the super robot hits the water in a classic cannonball posture, causing a gigantic plume to erupt into the sky in the wake of it striking home. The force of the impact may well carry the machine all the way down to land on top of the Tuatha, but Tessa can probably avoid that trick easily enough. But if nothing else, it gets Kusuha into the fray, and probably will give her opponent a bit of a fright.

It also gets her well away from Aquarion, which she's mentally dubbed 'Orgytron' for the time being.

"Butterfly, energy alert!" Pierre calls out.

Silvia de Alisia says, "Counter!", and even though a arrow is quickly shot from the bow, it dissipates underneath the stronger red dual beams, the Aquarion stumbling back, taking a 'seat' in the air. Silvia shakes her head, and the long-limbed Aquarion makes its' way back to his feet. "Right, lets' do what we're best at." Sirius suggests. Pierre chuckles, and Silvia nods. "Lunatique Archery!" Silvia cries. "Shot through..." Pierre says, voice soft. "The heart!" Sirius finishes. The Aquarions' form shifts around, the large green bow reappearing in its' arms. even as it takes the ranged attack position in the back. The fingers move, nimble in this form, even as the 'string' of it gets drawn back. Power gleams there in the string, before it suddenly solidifies into a wicked looking, golden Arrow. That continues growing, and growing, until its' of a very size that near-rivals the Aquarion in length. "Shoot through the heart, and to the moon!" The butterfly cries, as there comes a heavy -twang-."

Up until now, things were fairly friendly as far as fights go. then duo goes for the throat and shit gets /REAL/. A curse escapes Marcus' lips as he instinctively ducks his head and presses the trigger. The Defiance pulse laser opens up with another burst of light, only to be immediately silenced by the scythe that cleans into it and seers into the head of the Battlemech. A sudden blast of rippling heat blows into the cockpit as the beam blade rips the cabin open, coming dangerously close to ending Marcus' life as it passes. "Jesus /CHRIST/!" Marcus stares at the three foot melted gash in the side of his cockpit, the edges of which are still molten hot, "So much for a nice, friendly bout! This fight's for REAL now!" The Grigori roars away on it's Jumpjets as it spins around, seeking distance from that nasty blade that almost melted it's face off. Marcus settles his sights on Deathscythe, then pulls the trigger and sends a barrage of fourteen missiles loose from his launchers, every one of which is guided by the laser targetting of the Artemis IV Fire Control System.

The Gelgoog Marine AS slings its shotgun and its chainsaw in one motion, twisting aside as gunfire hurtles up at it. Hovering at a superior altitude to the Valkyrie, and with significant distance on him now, the redheaded pilot points with the Gelgoog's right hand, "You and your machine guns! What a waste of ammo when you only need one shot!" The device clipped to the right side of the backpack emits a noise, then swings forward, extending a handle. The gelgoog grips this, as the device continues to move. Swinging forward from the weapon's underside, it's a stack of three tubes. These lock into place. The two top tubes swing down, locking in. The final tube then swings up, locking into place. No wonder it folds up so absurdly - The cannon barrel is longer than the Gelgoog Marine AS is tall. Crimson markers skim across the screen, locking in on the Valkyrie. She doesn't even try to lead the target. The projectile speed is just so high, she doesn't suspect this range will make much of a difference. When the cannon fires, the burst of propellant is enough to rattle windows far below, and the recoil adds a good thirty meters to the Gelgoog's altitude. The shell itself, 680mm of high-velocity, armor-piercing death, travelling at 200 meters per second, "HERE, CATCH!"

Half a success. Lark did manage to tempt Elizabeth to the surface, but not to stay there for long. She expects a second missile salvo.

Instead she gets a harpoon. "Brace for imp - " is about as far as Lark gets before it actually impacts. It hits the small rear wing, more like a spoiler over the MS launch bay than anything else, and plows up a lot of sparks before finally embedding itself in the door. More sparks, of course, erupt when it becomes electrified.

"Fire on launch deck!" This is less bad than it sounds, Lark figures; there's no mechs /on/ the launch deck, and because it's empty she can just let the automatic fire control systems run full blast. Still, they're being pulled... and she has the bigger ship.

"Full speed forward and ascend," Lark says, lips curling up into a grin. "Let's pull that sucker out of the water! Prepare the lasers!" Her helmsman may not be particularly experienced, but going up and away is not exactly the most complicated maneuver in the world. The GN Tau engines blaze brighter red as Lark tries to literally drag Elizabeth up and out of the water.

Oh, and as the Daybreaker comes close to the surface, the enormous laser cannons mounted on the rear wings swivel around and let loose colossal orange-white blasts of energy, each a good thirty or forty feet across. They haze prismatically as they travel through mist... but it should still be enough, Lark thinks, to make a point.

The Gelgoog's range does make a bit of difference as max has enough time to react and get out of the extremely rediculously large missile tubes, or cannons as he finds out. "geez. and I thought reality bending laser were a bit silly." He then rolls his eyes and shrugs. "I scratched her paint, that's good enough for me." he doens't even bother returning fire as he pulls away from the battle, extends and retreats. No point in continuing for the time being.

Macua Huitl says, "To hell with you bastards." The machine's shield rises up and a spike flips out from behind it. The machine' s optic lights up as the rifle is returned to it's dock for now. She sees the incomming attack and is just gone a second before Adam pulls the trigger.

"I'll be drugged up on combat drugs. To hell with it."

She rushes the other machine with the spike on the shield and she's oging top try to drive it into the TSF then rip and twist it around. She's got an idea of how the machines are put together it seems.

The Daybreaker struggles against the might of the Kolyma, trying to drag it back towards the deep water. The two are caught in conflict..at least until MAKI detects energy buildups. "...let out more line, Ester!" Elizabeth dives, forcin the lasers to refract massively until they do nothing more than cause som steam. Elizabeth grins as the harpoon cord pulls tight again. "She's making this fun...but we have to weaken those engines!"

The intercom comes on. "POIPOIDER! Go out there and smash some engine!" "What about the GN particles?" "You're fast enough to avoid them! NOW GO!" The dolphin sighs...and then dives from the machine, heading through the water in his power suit before exploding out of it, his jetpack flaring. He aims himself at the Kolyma's engines, screaming all the way. If nothing else, he may cause some trouble for the engineers if he can smash himself aboard - or damage an engine from the outside. He'd be happy with either one.

Astrid could fire after the retreating Valkyrie, except that her B.F.G. only has one round in it. A firing rod extends from the back of the Xamel Cannon, ejecting the spent shell behind and to the side of the weapon. The Gelgoog releases the handle, and the weapon swings back. At the same time, the barrels unlock and begin folding up, back into that bulky but compact form. She pulls the shotgun out again and reloads it, ejecting that spent cartridge. Keeping this weapon in hand, the Gelgoog Marine AS Custom descends to the town. "In all this confusion," she reasons, in a moment of post-combat lucidity, "I should grab some of the junk we came for!" Retreating, to her, is a bit annoying. But not something that'll piss her off. She's something that's worth running the hell away from, after all.

"What is it doing?" Ascian wonders aloud, knowing that at least Duat will reply to him. "It seems to be charging some kind of weapon, sir." Like some kind of female metalic butler, it gives that reply. "Well... what are we waiting for then, let's get out of here!"

The wings of the Amenthes kind of 'expand' as the bits shift slightly outwards, and thicker crystals of Metatron are pushed out further. The red ember feathers of energy that flail around it grow in quantity, and the unit suddenly rushes straight in for the Aquarion whilst it is still drawing the string.

Then, when it finally lets go, the unit weaves around, then... beautifully spins exactly around the beam - making a full 360 loop around it... making time almost look like it is standing still... before it resumes and the target becomes quite apparent.

Rifles arms still firmly it begins a quick barrage at the Aquarion. However, its shots go wide, hitting the water behind it. However, keeping a close level around it - making it hard to move out of the way without getting hit by at least a few of the beams.

And then it becomes apparent just why it choose for such a tactic. Trailing behind it, are not one, not two, but four burning balls of Metatron energy 'fire'. Its red feathery Metatron crystals gleam for a moment, before the unit suddenly stops right in front of the Aquarion - head almost touching the opponent.

For a moment, it looks like it will not continue the attack. For a moment, it hangs there like the god of rebirth, its red feather-shaped energy signature enough to dazzle someone who might be easily distracted by such symbolic things. For a moment... Ascian is calmly breathing within the cockpit, the flow of energy moving calmly through the bioluminescent veins of the unit.

Then. The young man suddenly cries out. "STOP MESSING WITH MARS!" What!? The unit raises one leg, and one arm on the opposite side, and does a backwards flip - that sends the four balls of Metatron impact energy straigh at the combined robot - enough to perhaps seperate it into its seperate flight units.

Tessa frowns at the state of the battle, but...it looks like it's going OK. More to the point, she has a problem.

"Grungust," Tessa mutters. "It had to be them, didn't it?" Still, a slow machine means better odds for Tessa. A machine like that won't be able to keep up with the TDD's maneuvering capabilities. She nods, slowly, plans forming in her head. Now, she just has to hope it works...

The massive cannonball explodes the water upward...but the de Danaan is quickly moving away, and in the lightless deep, it's difficult to make it out amid the waters, especially given its nearly invisible sensor profile.

However, the missile that comes screaming out of the darkness might help.

Kraka-boom.

The sound is quite literally deafening as the missiles erupt across Deathscythe Hell's chest, like the sound of a hammer of God descending onto the God of Death. Duo's eyes are wide with shock and shockwaves as each missile takes a chunk of his armor away; first the side of his leg, exposing the wiring. Then the upper arm, chunks of Gundanium melting and flying off into the sky. Then the other leg, bringing Deathscythe down to its knee. Duo's knocked about in the cockpit, pain overcoming his senses - but he can see that Mac's still alive. That was enough, right now; he could focus on his own fight again.

Deathscythe pulls itself up; its facemask, half-removed, exposes the wiring and the disturbing circuitboard 'face' underneath the helmet. It's like looking at the Reaper's grin, as Deathscythe advances once more, charging forward once more without thought for his own safety. The blade is tight in his hand as it spins, digging into the area around it; Duo once again gets right in Marcus's face as the jetscythe swings around, cleaving through a building and bringing it down as he slices towards Marcus's side.

This just isn't working. Why isn't it working? Adam had her on the ropes a second ago, and now all of a sudden she's mounting a comeback, "No! I won't let this stand!" He roars out, as he shoves himself away, his mech falling and skidding along the ground as he forces himself back to get some room to attack, "I will not allow myself to be brought down again!" Adam has seen nothing but defeat in most of his attempts to destroy the forces of evil and injustice, and he will not stand for it any longer. His attempts to fire back with his assault rifle undoubtedly also ping and deflect off of the shield, so he decides to break out something with more power. A missile deploys and sails the short distance between the two mechs, a second before the rail gun announces that it's back online.

To be fair, the Kolyma has the 'safe' kind of GN Engine. Poipoider is only in danger from normal engine problems, like heat.

"She knows to hide in the water," Lark mutters, mostly to herself. "Pretty good. Okay," she says, raising her voice, "missiles again. Load bays four and six - the back ones! Prepare for staggered fire! We're going to shell that pirate until she heads on out of here!"

Poipoider impacts by one of the engines and does not immediately fall off. There is no obvious way in without going through one of the engines, which is hot enough that it's not recommended, but he can certainly smash things up - and does, as Lark cannot quite figure out how to dislodge him. Tinier turrets pop up over the frame in an attempt to convince him to un-board.

The big attack, though, is from the missile launchers in the rear; as ordered, they begin to fire, alternating between sides to keep Elizabeth guessing where the next explosive is coming from. The Kolyma banks while it does, an additional attempt to get Poipoider off.

Fire erupts once more from the shoulder mounted Plasma Rifle, flames licking over Duo's shoulder as he charges. Marcus lets out another curse as he swivels his mech around and takes another blow to the arm instead of somewhere more vital. Duo's cleaving strike is rewarded with said arm sheering away from the battlemech and crashing lifeless to the ground. "You god /damn/ /IDIOT!!/" Marcus throttles his Battlemech to full speed and charges /right/ at Duo, it's one remaining arm out stretched to catch Deathscythe in a clothesline and throw it into the rubble of the building he brought down. Then Marcus pulls back the boxy forearm of the Grigori and /slugs/ the gundam in the face. Then again. And again. And /again/. "YOU! KIDS! SHOULDN'T! THROW! AWAY! YOUR! LIVES!" Yes, Marcus is a little wild at the moment. Near death experiences tend to do that.

So this sub seemed to have quite a few tricks up its sleeve, didn't it? Well, that might be the case, but Kusuha could hold it here for quite a while if she needed to. And as long as it was under 'control' so to speak, it wouldn't be attacking her friends or bombarding the port. "I apologize for the inconvenience, but I need to stop you here!" she transmits. There's little hope that something as stealthy has that sub was going to be reply, but there was always a chance. She really disliked having to fight other people who should by all rights be on the same side. They were all trying to keep the Earth safe, after all. The missile explode nearby to the Grungust, the shockwave causing the strange dimpling effect in the water as it expands outwards in a large sphere around the Type-2. Kusuha grimaces for a moment, the super robot riding the blast wave and absorbing as little of the blast as possible, but it's difficult to keep from being rattled around by that sort of hit. "I'll make sure that you don't break contact either! So don't think of trying to run away!" The one advantage of being in a super robot is that its weapons tend to work everywhere. As the Grungust pulls back one arm, the rocket booster switches over to a hydrojet, sucking in a huge amount of water as Kusuha lines up the angle that the missile had roared in from. "Boost Knuckle... SPIRAL!" she shouts, and sends the fist blasting off through the water. It spins around, doing its best to home in on the Toy Box and slam into it like the fist of an angry... well, Grungust. And she's not really *angry* either. So just the fist of a slightly annoyed Grungust.

"Beams, missiles, the whole thing, Silvia! Duck!" Pierre says, even as she twists in her seat to glance at the window where Sirius' face appears. "Silvia, we must do -something-!" He says. "Right, nii-sa-- I'm sorry, right! Let's do this! JUMP!" Silvia, Pierre, and Sirius all jump in their seats at the same time, much like a school girl jump-roping. This, oddly, works. Silvia laughs, even as the Aquarion whirls around, aiming for the other again, the Arrow-beam forming as it goes straight for the weak spots Silvia -thinks- she sees again. "Be prepared!"

That was the very definition of brutality. Deathscythe Hell is caught right by the fist; it falls backwards into the building, arms draping out and crushing more of the roof. And then Marcus is on him, wailing away at the Deathscythe Hell and beating it harder and harder with his one good arm, and each hit crumples the face a little more. Duo says nothing; he doesn't even cry out for a while, as Deathscythe's warnings go off, until finally he murmurs just one thing over the tightbeam to Marcus.

And then the thrusters kick in, and the shattered, helpless Gundam pulls right through the building by the verniers and retreats. It's not ablle to fight anymore; it's going to take some serious work to make it function right again, and Juku was probably going to have his head for this. Assuming he didn't give himself the ringer first.

Poipoider hangs on for dear life, taking bullet fire and retaliating by trying to grab a turret and use it to punch an engine. Really, his main job is to be distracting and slow the Kolyma so that his captain can do what she has to. Which, unfortunately, is not quite enough. Elizabeth grits her teeth - but with the cord connecting the two ships, there's little she can do to dodge the explosives that begin coming down around her.

They rock the Daybreaker, smashing armor. "Hull breach in sector 12. Sector has been sealed." "Of course, one of the ones we repaired...well, if that's how she wants to play...all power to engines!" Elizabeth takes the wheel, spinning it quickly. The Daybreaker turns towards the sea.

And then it charges, aiming to tear the harpoon in the Kolyma out of the ship for massive damage! Hopefully the cord won't snap. Poipoider, meanwhile, keeps banging on the engine as the Daybreaker gathers speed. He'll be there for most of the episode, probably.

Obviously, Silvia either is still wrong, or the Amenthes is too quick for her to abuse that mysterious 'weak spot' of hers. The phoenix-like Orbital Frame moves straight down this time, getting beneath the opponent, then lets its verniers roar to get it behind the opponent and brings its two arms together.

"Tssk, they aren't even answering." Ascian was clearly getting too used to those talkative enemies that could never quite /shut up/ when he was fighting them. It almost seemed like common courtesy by now.

With the arms together, the metal molds and shifts again, forming the two into a single two-barreled rifle of severe power. The energy that normally flowed so equally throughout the machine begins to shift its main attention forwards along those arms, forming a red 'plume' at the front of the weapon.

"Take this!" Ascian activates the weapon, which suddenly compresses the space between him and the area behind the Aquarion, and then fills it with severe quantities of weaponized Metatron energy - the beam filling the sky.

"Keep up the turrets!" Lark doesn't entirely trust the automated systems, but they are better than nothing, and she doesn't have so many gunners she can afford to spend them on direct control of tertiary weapon systems.

As a result the Kolyma sprays bullets. A few of them actually go down towards the water, impacting against the Daybreaker; an extraordinarily lucky one impacts the taut cable and damages it enough that the tension is enough to snap it. Some are probably what Poipoider is dodging, though Lark has trouble hitting someone there anyway.

"Prepare all missiles for simultaneous launch," Lark decides, "and in the meantime..." What? No lasers, the missile batteries are taken with reloading... And all of a sudden, she grins. "Launch a construction crate off the launch catapult."

Half the bridge crew looks at her like she's crazy. "You heard me."

The Kolyma adjusts itself fractionally, the back hatch opening. The deadfire box that arcs through the sky is way, /way/ too high to actually hit the Daybreaker - but the turrets shoot it automatically, and a hail of tools falls from the shattered container, some of them moving fast enough to at least dent metal.

Macua Huitl is still locked in combat with Adam Winter and she's pulling out the anti ship rifle again. Like hell she can pull out. The guy she's facing would cut her down most likely if she ran, she sees the missile lock warning. She takes aim and fires a round, taking out the missile with a single shot, it explodes, she pulls the lever back and still has a shot left she is mapping out a path to get out of here but she's got to deal with this guy or there will be an unmarked grave in her future most likely. She fires again, not once but three times.

"Silvia, I don't think we can dodge this one!" Pierre says, a warning even as Sirius lets' out a low breath. "In that case, defend!" The Aquarion balls up slightly, arms crossing in front of its' chest, defending itself even as it takes the hit from the Orbital Frame, the result knocking her back a few feet. Silvia takes advantage of the long range now between the two to fire up the bow and arrow again, but there's a slight difference in this one, as its' sharper, sleeker, and more aero, well, dynamic. Silvia -finally- toggles open a public com to Ascian. "What in the world -are- you!" She cries, as the twang of the arrow letting go is heard.

Tessa frowns at the data. She's fast, she thinks, unhappily. What can Tessa do about that? This isn't really going well, but...

A slow breath. Well, the M9s will help with the pillaging, anyway. That's worth something. Even if it means repairs to the ship, but...Tessa knows her baby can handle it.

Though that doesn't mean the rattle of the impact doesn't bother her, and she grates out, "Evasion! EMFC full power, slide two hundred meters to the left! Keep her occupied! Our mobility underwater is far greater even than this! Fire tube seven, maybe we can get her with another--!"

"Tube seven damaged, unable to fire! VLS 3, 4, 8, offline!"

Tessa bites into her lip hard, sucking on her hair as she stares hard at the readouts. That's going to cost them. "Deploy depth charges, then," she says, coolly. "Keep them busy until the new tubes are loaded. Go!"

They float out of the murk, explosives seeking out Kusuha and exploding. They don't do it very well.

In the town, the blue and white Gelgoog Marine AS Custom is in the process of securing one of the shipyards. Driving away security personnel, for the most part, as the mobile suit already stands on the wreckage of a pair of tanks that'd been mobilized against it. It's armed with a beam machinegun now, but isn't firing. There's just no point to shooting at people. Inside the cockpit, Astrid's face is a grim frown. Noise on the radio makes her look down, almost thoughtfully, "..Alright, here I come." Twisting the controls, the Gelgoog turns away and launches back into the sky, headed seaward. Lifting the beam machinegun, Astrid works the action, disengaging its power cell. With confirmation in her screens, Astrid punches the controls forward and dives into the sea. Underwater, she homes in on the sound of explosions, "Charges..? There." The beam rifle is put away, and replaced with the bulky but familiar shape of a hyper bazooka. Astrid and her Gelgoog Marine are too far to get a solid target on the Gungrust, but she knows where the TDD-1 is, and it'll be just a few moments before she can help the besieged submarine.

Marcus just /stops/ punching the hell out of Deathscythe at Duo's rather pathetic plea, then grits his controls tightly and throttles back as Duo retreats. His one living hand grips the controls of his Battlemech tight enough to go white knuckled. Then Marcus just turns the very /air/ around him blue with curses vile enough to make sailors free. The Battlemech turns and starts to /stomp/ it's way across the base as the cursing continues. Even as he flicks on the Trailer frequency, the cursing doesn't stop.

What the hell was he? Ascian blinks a few times, as the public communication line goes open. "I'm who I am!" He once again sends out his visual data and voice - a young man with a bandaged off eye. "What do you expect me to be!?!?" He then adds, glaring at her angrily.

The Amenthes seperates the two weapons and quickly dances to the left, leaving another trail of ember feathers in its wake - only for them to be pushed aside and disappear amidst the energy of the fired arrow-beam.

The unit dances further along in the sky, moving up for a moment, then diving straight down to a point behind Aquarion, where it halts and turns around on one leg... as if the sky was the ground - head facing directly towards the combined unit.

The wings shrink again, and the energyflow finds a more general concentration again. The shining red diamonds attached to the spade-ended tendrils that make for the Orbital Frame's tailfeathers, flare up again, orbs of energy once again generating from them. "Who are you!?" He then asks, "Why do you fight!?" He then decides to ask a question right back, whilst the flaming balls of fire once again go flying, their destructive powers still unknown to the Aquarion - for it had dodged each and every previous try.

"DAMMIT!" Elizabeth shakes her fist as the cable snaps. "We're going to need to do something drastic!" She shakes her head. "Argh...and - what the!?" MAKI explains: "That is a crate." "...blast it! Or catch it! Either!" A torpedo is fired at the crate...but misses completely. The Daybreaker, instead, catches the crate...with its armor.

"Minor hull breach, Captain. Sector 5 sealed." "...did we get the crate?" "Yes." Elizabeth nods. "Well, that's...acceptable. She's /clever/...well, we can do clever too." The Daybreaker is still accelerating out of the inlet. It arcs around, turning widely...and races forward again. Lark has been drawn out over deep enough water for this plan to work.

"But," Elizabeth adds, "I think I prefer /stupid/." And then the submarine slams into the ground alon the inlet's edge, rides up it...and thanks to sheer speed, keeps /going/. It flies through the air, aimed for the Kolyma. The wedge on the front is /very/ sharp.

And then, whether through air or hullmetal, the Daybreaker slams down into the inlet's deeper waters with a /massive/ splash. Elizabeth has been laughing the entire time.

This time the explosion is much worse. The depth charges go off right in Kusuha's face as the Grungust surges through the water after the Toy Box. She didn't even see them coming - its not too surprising, given that the Grungust doesn't have much in the way of sonar or other water equipment, but the difficulties that this presented were going to be severe. She would just have to hope that there was something that could be done to keep that sub occupied...! The Grungust bursts through the choppy water left in the wake of the twin depth charge detonations, its fist swinging around and docking with the rest of the unit. Kusuha pushes the throttle forward, her machine shedding a huge shroud of turbulent water and bubbles as it plows through the ocean in pursuit of the Tuatha. Visual contact is all that is important now - it's not going to give her much time to react if the submarine does something unexpected. And of course, she has no idea that there is backup coming to Tessa's rescue as well. But as the Grungust gets close, the blue haired girl closes her eyes and concentrates. The command chair flashes in response, two emitters glowing green on either side of Kusuha's head as the T-LINK system engages. "A little closer... a little closer..." she whispers. And then: "Take this! Dragon God Fist! Hah!" And she lashes out with a single blow towards the Tuatha's engine block. "HAH!" And another. "HA! HA!" Two more. "ATATATATATATATATATATATATAT!" And the Grungust, illogical due to the fact that its UNDER WATER, unleashes a flurry of blows at the back of the Tuatha de Dannan.

"My name is the Butterfly-" Silvia gives a cry as the flaming balls wrap around the green and white super robot, singing it dark, causing Silvia, where she's sweating in her dark pink-purple-red suit, taking a deep breath. "- and I fight for the future of the Earth!" The Aquarion hangs in the fragile balance of time and attack, before Silvia throws it into action, Pierre and Sirius crying out in surprise. "Hyiiiiiiieh!" A single shot eminates from the Aquarion, heading straight for the Frame.

"THEN WHY ARE YOU WITH THE A-LAWS!?" Ascian manages to yell at her. "THEY CARE ONLY TO DESTROY!" Before that yell turns into a painful scream, the unit hit by that single shot straight in the center of the Torso, and leaving a gigantic hole in the middle.

The Amenthes flickers for a moment. Then... simply plummets to the ground. It ends up crashing into the water, its hands covering the cockpit in which the framerunner just got a severe backlash of energy and is floating somewhere between the realm of dreams and conciousness.

The crate is broken. But hey, there's some tools still in it! And scattered all over the area, really. Some of them may be on the Daybreaker in other places.

"Okay," Lark says. "Prepare the missiles. Once she starts to surface, we're going to fire them, see if we can - "

"Captain! CAPTAIN!"

"What," Lark says, turning, before her eyes open wide as she sees a submarine literally /drive itself up the fjord and make a 'running' leap/. "Evasive action! EVASIVE ACTION!"

The Kolyma banks and ascends literally as quickly as it is physically able to. It rises up, and up, and up - but the Daybreaker still catches it, the razor blade tearing sheets of armour off the underside of the Kolyma with a squealing noise. "Holy shit!" Lark forgot her position for a moment.

The Daybreaker smashes into the sea and kicks up water everywhere. If Lark was thinking about using the lasers again, she certainly isn't now; instead every missile port on the Kolyma opens simultaneously, spraying missiles that lance away from the ship before making sharp turns and aiming directly at the Daybreaker. Lark is counting on the pilots being a little dazed from the landing.

The massive shot from the anti-ship rifle strikes at the Raptor, blowing a hole clean through it and making the pilot stumble down to the ground. He's down to one knee. He's literally on his last legs now, and as he looks up at the pirate mech, he wonders how he could have come to this, "Can't...Let myself lose...Not again.." He raises the rail gun, with only one round left in it, as he tries to take aim at Macua's mecha. Missing this shot will mean the end for him, no doubt. He knows he has to make this one count, as he takes aim and lets fly with one last blast from the rail gun, the massive chunk of super-accelerated metal flying for it's target.

Tessa's already released her men, after all; in a lot of ways, she could just hang out at the back. Maybe bombard the place to a crater when they're done. But no, she has to fight Kusuha, and put all her men in danger, and...

She bites her lip. SHe's got to get 'that project' completed. This ship...it's just not going to take the kind of combat this war requires of her.

She closes her eyes, uneasy. "Captain," the comms officer warns. "C--captain!? She's coming again! Looks like...closing to melee!? But at this range, the ship will--!"

"EMFC slide, downward, fifty meters. Should be enough. Do it now!"

The blows come in...and the submarine, /impossibly/, just slides out of the way - one of the blows from that furious assault rattles the ship, but the engine block remains unsullied, and Tessa...

Closes her eyes, and says, "Now, unload every tube in her face."

The noise of the battle is mostly drowned out for Astrid underwater, so she has no idea of the crazy-awesome maneuver Captain Elizabeth just pulled on the enemy gunship. Closing in on the TDD-1, Astrid flips through her controls, shifting the visual input to be more suited to underwater. It's still difficult to pick out the Toy Box, being a stealth submarine and all. But the explosions of depth charges and the activity of the Gungrust Type 2 harassing the submarine are far more telling, "There you are." Just as the Gungrust dives in to start pounding on the submarine's hull, Astrid pushes her thrusters harder, closing in and raising the bazooka to aim. Red indicators circle in around the super robot, flash a few times, and then go solid, "Doesn't even know I'm here. That's fine, just hold still and punch the big bad submarine." The rocket fired from the Gelgoog's hyper bazooka has more in common with a torpedo, when fired underwater. But at least at this angle, if Astrid misses, she won't hit the Tuatha de Danaan instead. No cheesy one-liner this time. Just a bazooka blindside.

Missiles rain down around the Daybreaker. The explosions rattle the ship, sending unbraced crew sprawling. Elizabeth barely keeps her feet. She looks up at the screens around her, giving damage readouts. Half of the ship's sectors flooded. Dozens of hull breaches. Allied suits damaged. She closes her eyes. It /hurts/ to have to do this...

But sometimes, a pirate has to admit they can't win the day. Better to survive and return later. She opens comms to the Kolyma. "Captain, you win. Good show with that new ship. I'll be facing you again some other time...but this time, we're pulling out. I'd appreciate but don't expect a ceasefire to collect the wounded."

And then, to Poipoider - though since he's /on/ the Kolyma, Lark can probably catch the communications: "Go get the damaged suits. Get 'em aboard. We're leaving." The dolphin immediately leaps off the Kolyma, setting to doing just that.

The Aquarion is smoking, singed, burnt up, fly-swatted, and generally abused. However, thanks to the aura level of the three piloting it, its' very much intact, even as Silvias' ice-blue eyes maintain their position on the enemy, waiting for now, even as she gives a thoughtful look down to Ascians' ship. "Hm..." She says, relaxing.

If there is one thing to say about a Grungust, it is that they do not go down easily. Kusuha grits her teeth lightly as the sub swings around to bring all of its tubes to bear. But she isn't going to just take this sort of barrage lying down - clearly this vehicle has enough firepower to be able to flatten the entire base if it were allowed to run wild. So she just had to tie it up, let everyone else defeat its allies, and then it would leave... right? That was what it should be doing at least. If the captain were actually going to go for that option wasn't something that Kusuha was free to predict. The barrage of explosives slams into the Type-2, rocking it in the water and causing chunks of armor to float away, drifting to rest down on the bottom of the ocean. Water pours into breaches in the hull, and while none of the damage is near the cockpit, red lights start blinking on Kusuha's console. The extra unit was going to be a problem... well, it would if she didn't do something about it right now. The blue and gold Grungust swings away from the Tuatha, one hand snapping round and swatting the bazooka around away. It's a sign of the high degree of control that the T-LINK System gives to Kusuha that she's able to just casually brush an explosive aside like that, without even setting off its warhead. But the Grungust plows onwards, pulls back one fist in what looks to be a Boost Knuckle attack... ...except it doesn't come. And the Grungust just barrels straight in, trying to wrap both arms around Astrid's Gelgoog. "My apologies, but I have people who are counting on me! I can't go down just yet!" she cries out, bringing one hand up above her head... and right down onto the large red button marked 'Maxiblaster'. "At point blank range...! Let's see if you can withstand this!" The crest in the center of the Type-2's chest folds back, revealing the massive energy blaster resting there. A heartbeat - and then it fires at Astrid, as the Grungust attempts to grab the Gelgoog and hold it right in the line of fire.

The Zudah, the Ghost Fighter, the thing's almost 12 years old but it was almost as fast as the TSF Adam was driving the other machines aim is well the Zudha is hit. IT's staggers back, and drops. It seems to be down, but somehow Macua manages to get it up. The machine turns and flees sputtering away from the shipyard.

There is a momentary flicker beneath the water, where Silvia is looking - that seems to indicate that the Amenthes is still somehow in tact and 'alive' - so to say. Ascian himself, slowly recovering, regains proper conciousness and is faced with a mostly dark cockpit.

The Artificial Intelligence unit, running off of backup power, is faintly glowing. And there is an abrupt and somewhat random pulse of energy that now and again manages to flow through the unit. But for all intents and purposes, the Phoenix is not going to rise from the water to assault Aquarion again. Not for another good while.

Astrid grins, "Yeah, that got your attention, didn't it?" Moving quickly, the Gelgoog thrusts its feet forward to halt itself, even as it tucks the hyper bazooka away. When it pulls its hand back into view, it's toting the unfamiliar boxy shape of an industrial rock-boring tool, "No need to apologize, kid, I've got people counting on me too. Like the crew of that submarine." That certainly got the Gungrust's attention, and now it's coming after her Gelgoog like it wants to be friends. Astrid isn't an idiot, though, and quickly thrusts back, out of reach, while depressing the trigger to send her chainsaw's teeth into a whirling frenzy. That's when the ceasefire order comes through. Pausing, Astrid glances at her console, almost in disbelief, "...We're givin' up?!" She raises the weapon, as if about to put it to use. Then, with a grunt of disapproval, the engine cuts out and the teeth deactivate, "Captain's called a cease-fire. You won, we're outta here." It's all slotted away, and the Gelgoog Marine AS Custom ignites its verniers, hurtling for the ocean surface. "Maybe next time, kid!"

Tessa exposes Kusuha to what is known in the industry as 'hellasplosion', and then Astrid shows up to save the day. Tessa frowns at that ballistic data -- "Didn't explode--?" she wonders, but they've got a problem to handle. "Is the hull intact enough for EMFC?"

"Aye, ma'am," an officer announces, and Tessa says, "Alright, then. All hands, brace for crash dive. Descend as far as we can go. The Grungust might be tough, but it's not intended for depth. The further down we are, the less ability it has to follow," even if Tessa's not totally certain it will be hindered much by the pressure, friggin'...super types. At the least, being further down will mean the Grungust has to work even harder to pursue the de Danaan in its full glory. "Get us away from here at all speed," she adds.

Which Kusuha will quickly learn is 'way the hell faster than the Grungust can actually go,' as the submarine scoots away at a frankly ridiculous pace.

When the pirates start to pull back, Lark lets them. "Hold position, hold fire," she orders of her bridge crew, extending - by radio - the request to the Alpha Numbers in general.

The Kolyma hovers in place, its damaged engine buzzing occasionally but otherwise able to hold it up without much problem. Lark supposes that she couldn't have asked for a better first mission. Nobody died (to her knowledge), and though the ship is damaged, it's functional.

"Good work," she eventually says, picking up the radio again.

Well, she didn't have any intention of chasing them once they fell back - that wasn't Kusuha's style, and she wasn't going to try and punish people for doing what they through was right. She just had to stop them if they were going to hurt people who were dedicated to protecting this world and everyone on it. ...well, that sounded a bit too conceited, didn't it? "I'm just trying to protect my friends," she says, watching as both the Gelgoog and the submarine move to disengage from the battle. It was over, at least. The Grungust rushes up to the top of the water, where it deploys what looks like a giant set of water wings. The super robot floats and bobs for a moment, before slowly making its way back to shore. All the while Kusuha looks off in the direction of the vanished sub, wondering just what they had been after... was it random violence, or had there really been a point to all of this...?