2011-01-30 - Pirate Hunting

Blanc Rival

"There's something detestable about Martian oceans." Arthur Goodman sits within the spacious confines of his captain's office. Despite the comfort of the chair he sits on, the disgraced Brigadier-General looks only dour as he stabs a fork into the mass of what looks something like fish meat drowned in sauces beneath him.

"Detestable culture, detestable living conditions, detestable people," he grumbles loudly to his lieutenant, standing stiffly at his side. "Even the food is detestable." Goodman jabs his fork into his meal, sauce oozing out between the prongs. "What -is- this?" "It's Martian Salmon sir. It's supposed to be the best--" "Disgusting." And Goodman devours more, chewing thoughtfully. His brows furrow. "Has everything been arranged?"

"Yes, we've set up monitoring posts at the three most likely city-ships to be targeted given past data," explains the lieutenant. "If they should arrive, we'll know immediately." "Good," says the A-LAWS general, frowning. "Make sure our pilots are ready to deploy. And make sure /those/ units are ready." "Yes, sir!" says the lieutenant, before exiting. Goodman looks down at his plate. "If I can catch that 'Ship of Aurora'... then maybe I won't have to gag down this disgusting food anymore...!" And then shovels even more of his meal down his throat.

Vastitas Borealis Ocean

Covering over half the red planet, the Vastitas Borealis Ocean is without a doubt one of the largest bodies of water in the solar system, the result of a still-incomplete terraforming process that has been partly responsible for the disarray Mars has been left in. It is here that the iconic city-ships of Mars can be found -- literal cities drifting on the vast Martian oceans.

Largos-Gallina is one such city-ship, built not to store people, but goods. Recently repurposed due to its substandard living conditions, the Largos-Gallina has been made into a storage facility for a variety of Federation supplies generally meant for the army assigned to the red planet. Anything from food to weapons can be found here - a literal treasure trove of goods.

Roughly five hours ago, a new shipment of goods had finished unloading at Largos-Gallina. The additional security to accompany the delivery has all but dissipated by now, and the city-ship, by all accounts, only has its standard guards in place to protect itself. In this lag between security rotation and strengthening, it is the perfect time to strike.

Which is, of course, why about an hour ago, the Largos-Gallina received a transmission from somewhere in the vastness of... well, Vastitas Borealis. The call is a familiar one to any city-ship managed by the Earth Federation - and a feared one by authorities. Citizens are often less fearful. And it's clear why, because the transmission was a wide-spectrum broadcast containing this:

A large, gray-haired woman has pointed a cutlass at the camera. "Listen up! This is the Ship of Aurora, the most skilled pirates in all of Mars! You know why we're calling. Clear your docks, people, and get out of the way, because we don't want to hurt you. We're just here for your goods! You know who we are, and you have one hour. Get moving, people!"

Which may not have been the smartest move - but is standard operating procedure for the Ship of Aurora. The massive pirate submarine is now approaching Largos-Gallina, expecting an easy enough job. The military police of Mars have never managed to beat them before, after all! There's little sign of their approach, deep under the waves, but no doubt they'll be there on time. Much as the Daybreaker always gives warning before its attacks, it has never missed one that it's announced. Of course, today there's some new hands to help...

Aboard the submarine, Elizabeth Liati is still grinning. "MAKI, Ester - keep us steady. All right, kids. They tell me you're some of the best pilots Earth and the colonies have to offer. You're on Mars, now! Hope you like water. We're liberating some supplies for the independence movements and resale - you wouldn't /believe/ the prices the Federation charges for what it lets out to the public. Don't do too much damage to the city-ship - but it's a tough old barge, so it can take a good amount if it has to. Oh, and one more thing."

Elizabeth stands up, pointing her cutlass ahead of her as she raises her voice. "You get paid your share based on your effort, so let's see your best out there! You do well enough, and I might even think about letting you be crew!"

 Erika Keese transmits, "Looks like the Ship of Aurora is up to her old tricks again."

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "You are in the vicinity as well?"

Transfered from the earth sphere to the martian theatre for some ungodly reason is a man who's body may have been named Jiro Yamada at birth, but who's soul crys out the name Gai Daigouji!

He stands now in the hanger, glowering at the hunched, cyclopian form of a machine that dates back from the one year war. He taps his foot in aggitation, muttering and grumbling to himself even as he approaches the unit and opens the pilot's hatch.

"No Umiganger." he can be heard to say as he fixes a helmet onto his red, nergal issue pilot's suit, "No Umiganger at all."

"We're deploying!"

Meriden Almace has been to Mars, oh, twice now. The last time she used her Gundam, but it isn't exactly set up for deep-water operations, having a nasty tendency to do things like 'sink'. Fortunately, A-LAWS had a unit for her.

Unfortunately, she has to share it. Meriden is sitting in the front cockpit. Behind and above her is a short, slightly chubby girl - Elia Clarent, another of Augusta's Newtype trainees and one with less actual battle experience than even Meriden. Both of them look somewhere between anxious (for Meriden) and terrified (for Elia).

The long, narrow, spike-like Trilobite cuts through the water, accelerating toward Largos-Gallina. From there, she can defend it! And, of course, catch the terrorist pilots. That's important too. "Aren't you excited?" Meriden asks her copilot, twisting around to look at her. "We're fighting pirates! Actual pirates!"

"Actual pirates shoot people," Elia says, morosely, and goes back to her steering.

Jung Freud had mysteriously been reassigned temporarily to Mars. She assumes this is because they need her help with the new Trilobites as one of the few people who are A. familiar with the GNMA control interface and are not B. a lovely Cyber Newtype.

Also, as part of C. cross-training initatives, she has a guest with her. As the long and slim craft breasts its way into the water, Kazumi Amano, from her perch directly behind Jung, says crisply, "Mars is certainly an interesting place, isn't it?"

"Yeah, sure," Jung says, focusing straight ahead. "I wonder how long all of this is going to last."

"It's a good question, isn't it?"

"Can you stop answering my rhetorical questions with your own rhetorical questions?"

This gets a polite laugh. "Why not?"

The Trilobite trails a gentle series of orange-crush sparkles as it descends into the depths, reorienting towards the Ship of Aurora and drifting, very quietly, towards it. "See, there's Meriden over there," Jung says, voice growing quieter due to submarine noise discipline. "This is probably going to be hilariously quick."

"Mm," Kazumi says.

"...."

From afar, Admiral Bright Noa shakes his head slowly as he watches Captain Elizabeth Liati rally everyone.

A mild frown edges at the corners of his mouth, "I miss having a pension."

He plays at the collar of his just-made campaign wear, a heavily-modified rendition of the Federation's command tans with waterproof calf-length boots. Over his dress-shirt, a luxurious black duster bearing sleeve-patches of Katharon Joint Command emblazoned above an eye-patched shark clutching a sword between its teeth and gorgeously ruffled lapels. There is also a matter of a rather jaunty hat, but thus far, it is nowhere to be found.

When you revolt against the man, you get brand new outfits. For every occasion.

"Alright, Captain Elizabeth," Bright nods to the saber-rattling woman ahead of him. "You've got command. Good hunting!"

"I always thought my first sortie would be inside of the Liondam," Otto muses to himself, inside his cockpit. He lifts his head up, as the cockpit screen comes online. He grabs the controls in front of him for dear life. The young man takes a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding in his throat and his chest. His stomach is twisted into knots.

"I suppose this will do."

His eyes widen as he sees the clear to launch sign. The blue and grey machine erupts from the launcher -- leaving two trails of wake after it. Otto is slammed back into his seat, and he grunts.

"This is Otto Habsburg!" he says, over an open line. "Launching in the Cordless Buckler!"

Once, Oliver Evlien served in the court of a queen. Now he prepares to aid pirates.

So it goes, he supposes with a sigh as he settles into the cockpit of the Hygogg. It handles a little closer to his SUMO, which helps a bit. But a SUMO doesn't have the right kind of protection to prevent a flooded cockpit, and the young guard has no intention of drowning at the start of the battle.

He adjusts his helmet, turning on the radio as the Hygogg powers up. "This is Ensign Oliver Evlien," he announces in his deep and formal voice. His characteristic shyness is often reduced in battle as he focuses on the mission. "Launching in the Hygogg. Best of luck to you all." With that, he takes hold of the controls and launches the underwater-ready, former Zeon mech.

The red-headed woman can't stop laughing to herself. Forgoing a depth suit, Astrid leans back in the seat of her Hygogg and flips through the startup procedure completely from memory. Once all systems are on, the screens powering up, and the blue machine's single optic flaring to life, the woman leans forward again and slowly wraps her fingers around the control yokes, "Heh heh... It's just like a bicycle. So old an' familiar..." The Hygogg straightens in its hunched posture, arms retracting to their shortest length as the machine stamps across the mobile suit bay and assumes its position on the launch catapult. It crouches down, bracing as the chamber floods around it, "This is Hailstorm. All systems green." Her teeth bare in a savage grin, "Launching!" There's a thump, a rush of force through the deadening pressure of water And then, trailing thin streams of cavitation, a blue and white Hygogg ejects from the submarine. Mid-launch, it thrashes its arms out, braking itself. Underwater jets flare again, and the wirey machine swings wide to join the battlegroup, "They won't even know what hit 'em!"

The Ship of Aurora. A notorious yet well beloved vessel to the Martian people for it's raids upon the oppressive Federation forces and redistribution of those outrageously priced goods. In a way, Erika admires them greatly, even if they have chosen to support Katharon instead of the Crusade like much of the rest of the Martian Underground. If circumstances were different, she's probably want to serve under their flag. They are a noble group, with Mars' best intentions in mind. Unfortunately Mars needs more than just nobility and daring Robin Hood antics. Mars needs it's freedom, and simple piracy won't get them any closer to that goal. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on, what with their whole 'Warn the civilians an hour before the raid' calling card and Erika has decided to go on a little independant scouting mission in her ReFined Z'Gok, arriving at the edge of the imminent battlefield. Erika however hasn't decided what she should /do/ now that she's here. Should she just watch passively or take a more proactive stance?

From within one of the Cordless Bucklers is a, judging by stature, young pilot. Other facial features are not visible because he is wearing his helmet with a tinted screen.

"Look. I can't work this way, I want more feedback." He tells a technician as he wields the wrench and screwdriver, rearranging screens. "Just stay out of my way. Please?"

The technician seems flabergasted at this, "B-b-b-but.." And than throws his arms up and descends down the ramp.

"Performing final checks..." This mysterious pilot says as he adjusts something on the consoles and finally drops down the wrench. "Perfect."

It was only than that he actually noticed Bright and Ms Elizabeth talking. He just stands there for a short moment, looking down at them. Perhaps wondering if he made the right choice. Then he finally settles into his seat, positioning the machine into the launcher.

He hesitates a moment, and then says, "This is codename... 'Racetrack'.." No wonder why he hesitated to say that. ".. Launching."

Inwardly he curses at the codename.

SOME TIME AGO

Onboard the Argama, the door to Camille's cell in the brig swings open. Quattro Bajeena, sans sunglasses and in a red normal suit, gestures toward the lift at the end of the hall.

"Come on, Camille. We're dropping to Mars to transfer to the Daybreaker in thirty minutes. Astonaige said you made some mistakes on the Zeta's seals."

He tosses a familiar white pilot suit into the room before turning away.

NOW

Quattro finishes checking the readouts on a handheld tablet while the test cradle surrounding the Hyaku Shiki prods at the golden mobile suit with pressurized arms. The design has been modified slightly, using data from the still in development Hyaku Shiki Land Type slated by Anaheim to go into production for Karaba. The underwater seals were the main concern to be installed; the optional missile pods have been forgone due to time constraints.

The blond ace looks over toward the Zeta, where Camille is likely performing the same last minute checks. His train of thought is interrupted by chattering from a nearby radio. "They're launching, Camille--"

Quattro grabs an air tank from the nearby diagnostic cart, tossing it by its strap. "--Take this. If you have to bail out, wait for retrieval or ascend slowly. Your dive watch should tell you what to do."

Louise does not quite have the latitude that a certain Mister does, but has very much near it; she gets to choose more or less where and when she deploys -- but every now and again there is a mission that she simply /must/ be at. Today is one of those days; it seems routine enough, and is with the ship she is nominally attached to besides, but perhaps it holds some more important meaning to her -- or one of her benefactors.

Whatever the case, the Superbia is launched from the Blanc Rival, the machine suited strongly to these particular quarters; it was always meant as an underwater and landing craft first and foremost, despite a GN Drive meaning it can basically go anywhere.

Louise settles into the cockpit, almost too calm. She slides a pill into her mouth, but when she does so it's a leisurely, practiced maneuver -- far from the panic that once cast a pall over all of her motions in combat.

Ascian is similar to Erika, in that he believes that it is a shame that The Ship Of Aurora is not one to combat alongside the Divine Crusaders. However, as one who's merely heard them as rumors and stories, he's never actually had any contact with them. So when the public broadcast had come through - he kind of... wanted to see this display of piracy for himself.

Spending his time these days, dutily committing to recon across the landscape of Mars, out on the lookout for the EFA and the A-LAWS, Ascian is looking around his cockpit as it brings up radar readings and vid-windows of potential signs of the intruders, whilst en-route to the ship-city in question.

It is when he arrives at a decent distance, that he simply... remains above in the sky and stops the Amenthes from moving further and settles himself a bit more securely in his seat. He taps his fingers, somewhat impatiently, on the half-orb controls, causing a few vid-windows the pop up and display different images of Largos-Gallina, from similar angles - but at different points. "How will they do it?" He spoke softly, to himself more than anyone else. "Maybe, when they are done, I can make the Federation's life a bit more miserable..."

EARLIER

It all happens so quickly Camille barely knows how to react. There's Captain Quattro, acting like nothing happened as the door opens and a suit is tossed Camille's way. He grabs it by instinct and the legend of the One Year War is gone before his protege can even utter syllable of thanks or condemnation.

"..." He stared down at the empty piloting suit with a slow-brewing look of irritation, finally shaking it off with a dismissive tch and hurrying it on.

NOW

Camille is indeed where the unofficial (Or was it?) leader of the AEUG expects him to be, taking in an earful from Astonaige about proper seal application and double-checking to make sure all the Zeta's specifications are up to standard. "I know." He offers off-the-cuff, catching the air tank with one hand, having heard the radio just as well, "They'll be ready for us, probably." But the advice is taken and listened to, the Newtype nodding and inspecting the tank carefully as Quattro coaches him in it's use. "Not too different than in space, except wetter. Okay, i'm ready to go."

Climbing into the Zeta's cockpit, he'll queue in launch with all the rest as the hatch hisses shut and the 360 degree display comes on. His nerves are calm, but his mind is bothered. Something was different about the Captain. It was a newtype things.

(Just what are you planning, Captain Quattro..?)

"Sir, we have reports that the Ship of Aurora has issued its warning. Our forces are mobilized and converging on them as we speak."

Arthur Goodman looks up from his second helping of overly-seasoned Martian Salmon, a broad smile twitching at the corners of his sauce-smeared lips. "Ah, good. Then the trap is sprung. So, let's just wait to hear the good news..."

And, it is as the Daybreaker makes its approach that the forces of A-LAWS mobilize en masse. Amongst them are a group of large, streamlined mobile armors; cyan and crimson in color, they fill the ocean depths with thick streams of burnt orange particles generated from three GN-T drives as they blast through the ocean. The underwater-purpose Trilobites.

The lead Trilobite swarms fast; all three of its GN-T drives emitting maximum thrust, it has one target in mind: the distinctive form of the Ship of Aurora beyond. "We have a lock-on target," speaks the first pilot, flipping through various controls. "Fire the torpedos -- we'll use it as a distraction to get in close and ram a couple holes into that damned terrorist ship! Fire!"

From the front launch tubes of the Trilobite fires a pair of larger torpedos; burnt orange GN-T particles ripple from behind them and churn up the Martian waters as they shoot for the Daybreaker, to pierce into its armored hull, inject an overload of their very own GN particles, and then explode -- a rippling expulsion of force and heat that sends waves of bubbling water in every direction.

"Shoot down the Ship of Aurora!"

 Erika Keese transmits, "A-Laws? Figures... guess they want to sink the Ship of Aurora to try and send a message to all of Mars."

 Ascian Luddite groans... "A-LAWS Bastards..."

Meriden Almace's Trilobite continues to lance through the water.

"Do you have to go so fast?" Elia complains. "We're just going to get shot at faster - "

"CHARGE! We're going to sink the pirates!" Meriden is the one with the actual propulsion controls, apparently, because the spike-like machine accelerates. She doesn't know a lot about the Ship of Aurora or the units it deploys, but she does recognize the cordless Buckler - more accurately, she recognizes it as something she doesn't recognize, and as such is not A-LAWS.

The machine unfolds, suddenly, as Elia attempts to brake Meriden. Its stubby red limbs extend into proper arms with pinching fingers, and the back half of the spike splits into four, a 'tail' between them. The sudden change in hydrodynamicy does slow the machine down; it also gives Meriden a good opportunity to fire a pair of brightly glowing energy pulses that trail sparks of light, exploding on impact with either Otto's Buckler or some inoffensive seafloor in the distance.

It has been a long and lonely trip with increasingly long internet lag. STAREN WIREMU sits in his cockpit as the water-converted Star Hawk MkII stands in the queue to launch. Finally it's his turn.

The Star Hawk rides the launch elevator and is then surrounded by water. As it takes off into the deep blue, Staren realizes something:

He's never fought underwater before.

Quattro ascends by lift to the cockpit of the modified Hyaku Shiki. It lumbers out from the test cradle, removing its beam rifle from the nearby recharge rack before lumbering toward one of the launch ports. It remains to the side, leaving it clear.

"Alright, Camille. I'll launch first and gain altitude. Pick me up with the Waverider and we'll approach the target from there.

Hyaku Shiki turns and bounds from the deck, engaging its boosted thrusters. Its trademark wing binders have been removed for favor of a larger energy pack, allowing for increased hovering ability under gravity. The golden mobile suit rockets into the sky, controlling its ascent but gaining enough distance to allow the Zeta time to transform and swing back around.

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "I may not like Katharon... but I sure as hell hate the A-LAWS more..."

 Erika Keese transmits, "Agreed."

Healing Care does not like her makeshift unit.

Frowning as the GINN WASP advances upon the Aurora like many of A-LAWS flagged forces do, the Cyber-Newtype just seems content in sulking like a child. "This is dumb," she grouses, absently kicking a foot against the side of the cockpit. "Why the hell're we going after pirates? And pirates on MARS no less? This is a waste of time!"

The GINN WASP maintains speed beneath the waters of the Martian ocean, approaching several small grunt K-allied units and firing. They go down with several missiles. Healing stifles a big yawn.

"I should put this thing on autopilot. This isn't any fun."

Aboard the Daybreaker, a calm voice speaks over the ship's intercom. MAKI, the ship AI, never gets upset. "Captain, we've detected Federation scent signatures in the water. They have prepared a larger defense than expected." "What? Then - it must have been a trap!" Elizabeth grins, taking the ship's wheel in her hands. (Of course it uses a big wooden wheel!) "Ah well, we'll just beat them at their own game and take our goods anyway! The Ship of Aurora won't lose!"

The torpedos race through the water at the submarine, and MAKI calmly reports this as well. "Several torpedoes are tracked as inbound. Displaying trajectories." On the monitor, such is done. "MILCH! Fire counter-torpedos! I'm taking evasive action, so hold onto your butts!" The wheel is spun, and the Daybreaker arcs left. As it does, torpedos blast from the top of the ship, moving out to confuse the tracking on the Trilobite's own.

It works - the ship dodges between the remaining explosives with relative ease. "All right...we need more room to maneuver. Ester, Milch, prepare depth mines. I want the area cleared for the main event." "Aye, captain!"

Again, missile tubes open - but this time, rather than torpedos, bouys are launched. They are off calculated bouyancy, to float around the ship at set distances in case anyone gets too close - at which point, they explode. They're set such that the Trilobite will have to dodge among them if it wants to stay in good targetting range.

Oliver's Hygogg is a ready and able suit that once dominated the seas of Earth. However, it is also much smaller than what is swimming towards him, looking like some kind of terrible deep-sea fish with no real fin action. It undulates gently as it comes.

In the cockpit, Jung says, "Look at that, Zeon!"

Amano, behind her, observes, "It's a little sad that we're on the opposing sides now, aren't we? You always seemed fond of them."

"No I wasn't!"

"You wanted me to go to that bar in Zuum City with you. You said they would have liked my style."

Jung grunts in annoyance even as she keys a button. The automatic torpedo loader fills four tubes which fire with a shimmering series of undersea FOOMS, trailing burnt-orange sparkles in their wakes as they converge on the Hygogg!

Tch. A-Laws, here? Erika frowns as she gets IIF information on her hud... looks like this isn't going to be your typical raid. If anything, the A-Laws are here to sink the Ship of Aurora as a message to the rest of Mars. Blood is thicker than water, and despite their Katharon allegience, the Ship of Aurora is still Martian, born and raised. With a blast from the hydrojet engines, the Oldsmobile mobile suit surges forward, making a beeline for the battle. "I hope you made arrangements to be shipped back home A-Laws, because I'm going to put every last one of you in a pine box!" The right claw snaps up and the underwater-use beam gun discharges it's energy towards the assailing Trilobites.

"It's funny; you'd think I'd have invented something to better work underwater by now," the Man from Jupiter may have said that, but as far as the IFF tag on the GINN WASP-Type and those at the local command carrier know, it isn't Paptimus Scirocco inside of the unit. It's someone else entirely.

All the same, amidst the sea of Tau-powered Trilobites propels a second of the WASP-type Ginn's, this one painted in the colors of an ace pilot; it's red. While that does not make it go any faster underwater, it nevertheless is propelling about thanks to the underwater propellers that have been strapped to it in various places. Are those water wings?

Acting as more of a rear vanguard, it awaits the inevitable; backup, and lots of it. Inside, the Admiral adjusts his hair.

Throwing himself into the pilot's seat, Gai's fingers find a control panal and key in whatever is required to seal him inside the aquatic coffin, shutting him away and into darkness, the confines are stifling for the few seconds it takes for the systems to boot up, monitors flickering to life along side read outs and gauges. The monster's single eye burns to life and makes a quick circuit around it's track, almost like the lights of a police siren.

Still grumbling, the ace pilot of the Nadeisco works through the start up sequence until all is ready... Save for one crucial thing.

Reaching into his suit, Gai produces a small device and promptly tapes it to the side of the cokpit. A push of a button fills the heart of the Z'gok with the all to familier cords of a opening sequence. His heart bouyed up from the previous glower.

"LETS GEKIGAN IN!" howls Gai Daigouji as his Z'gok is disgorged from the federation ship, the battering ram-like head of the Zeonic unit plowing through the water and into battle in the wake of so many shinier, newer suits. He is past that however, shrugging off his earlier dower feelings and barreling head long into glorious battle! His sights lite upon a certain Hygogg. There, that is his enemy!

"Take this!" cries Gai in rightous anger, "Feel the justice of my Umigagnar! GEKIGAN BEAAAAAM!" The Z'gok swings one of it's three clawed limbs around, leveling it on the noodle armed wonder of Astrid's ride before firing a barrage of particle beams from the central node of the limb.

"Roger that, Captain Quattro." Camille rode the left in the Hyaku Shiki's wait, making some last-second attunments the Zeta's OS to account for both the martian atmopshere and the anticipation of underwater combat. Aside from the seals, nothing about the suit's armament had been altered: The Zeta had always been beam-heavy-which could be a disadvantage underwater-but the newtype had a trick or two up his sleeve.

The Zeta launches behind the Hyaku Shiki, quickly transforming and manuevering itself beneath the Hyaku Shiki. Once docking is complete he'll begin a just-steep-enough descent to take them into the alien ocean. "All the action is happening beneath the surface. The A-laws a fielding that new underwater unit, the Trilobyte.." Frowning, Camille would still take those over a Codarl on any given day.

A strange pressure washes over him the closer they get, and Camille fight to keep focus, "This is...Captain, do you feel it?"

But this was /Mars/, damn it, not Jupiter.

The Hygogg is indeed a lot smaller than the giant, fishlike Trilobite! In fact, at first Oliver almost wonders if it's part of the local fauna, before it gets close enough for him to realize it's a piloted machine. Oh, and it fires torpedoes on him.

"Great Scott," he 'curses' to himself as he swerves up and then dives down in order to evade the incoming missiles. He returns fire with the hand beam hastily before getting his bearings again. While he doesn't like to admit inexperience, he isn't exactly an expert at underwater combat. It isn't like space combat at all.

"Well, then, if it's to be like that..." If the fish likes missiles, the fish will get missiles! And so the little Hygogg that could fires off a bevy of smallish torpedoes at Jung and Kazumi, trying to remain moving either way. It is a bit like a frog fighting a trout.

"I can do this," Otto tells himself, repeating it. It is like a mantra, to remind him that he does not -- unlike what the odds suggest, for men in his situation -- mean that he will die on his first sortie. His eyes narrow, as he sees the immense Trilobite up ahead. His machine surges forward, jets of water bursting out from behind it.

The Cordless Buckler banks and turns, hard, as the torpedoes come in -- and the machine comes rushing at him. The first whips over the shoulder of the machine, leaving a wake of bubbles after it. The second slams into the shoulder and explodes with a crackling fireball, blasting it backward. Smoke pours off it.

"Scheiss!" Otto spits. He sees the machine rushing at his and considers, taking deep breaths and forcing himself to stay calm. He remembers his training and realizes that he cannot outrun it. The best way would be to get in closer. His eyes study the arms on it -- he begins estimating the size and the expected reach, and then surges forward. The Cordless Bucker zig-zags intowards it, and brings back its arm. The huge harpoon mounted on it punches forward -- shoving the barbed weapon at the left shoulder of the Trilobite.

Bright Noa busies himself with aiding the Daybreaker crew in their combat manuevers. Observing tactical data here, aiding with trajectories there. The entire time, though, something just gnaws at him. Something that lurks in the back of his head and gives a bottomless feeling to his stomach that all combines to a feeling of 'something is wrong here.'

But what could it be?

Admiral Bright takes another look at the tactical map. A host of A-LAWS units, mixed in with a chaotic assembly of Crusaders and Trailers. What's that lurking all the way in the back? Could it be...?

Wait.

Bright glances over his shoulder, taking a final glance at the motley crew of scalawags and scoundrels that staff Captain Elizabeth's Daybreaker. The realization hits him. Of course.

They all remind him of his wife and her annoying tendency to slip into pirate speak. Just how did the Yashima Family come into their riches?

"..At least I won't have to worry about running out of salt," Bright sighs in relief.

The 'docking' ends up to be mostly Hyaku Shiki landing on the Waverider's back and gripping one of the wings. It shudders slightly as they enter the water, but the suit is braced well enough that it hangs on.

FLASH!

Quattro narrows his eyes. "That... pressure."

"I feel it too, Camille. Stay focused. The longer we keep them tied up down here, the longer our above surface forces have to complete their mission."

Enemy forces begin to emerge in the surrounding waters, and Astrid's predatory grin only widens. The faintly glowing red optic of her Hygogg swivels from side to side, scanning through the assorted targets - No, victims - entering her visual range. And then something familiar catches her eye. Amongst the fish-like Trilobytes and Cordless Bucklers, is that a... "Dependable ol' Z'gok." the woman mutters fondly. Wrenching her controls, the Hygogg thrusts its arms out as brakes, then twists them, hurling the entire mobile suit into a roll out of the enemy suit's Particle Beam fire. "Oh, *yes*," The fire is already filling her veins, "Come on!" Deep-sea thrusters flare, and the Hygogg lurches into motion once more, straight at Gai's Z'gok with its spindley arms held out. The cannons concealed within its chest open up, but the shot goes wide in a sweep to the left. However, the redhead is already zeroing in on the right, drawing back an arm and then lancing forward with the Iron Nail, "Come on!! I'LL RIP YOU APART!"

Jung feels the passing pressure of other minds. She tries not to focus on it even as one particular one seems... familiar. She isn't sure where - is it that man Quattro Bageena, or is it that boy who flew away from a bunch of dying Coordinators?

This is a lot of why torpedoes hit the immense seacraft, sending it shuddering violently. Kazumi is thrown to the side, bouncing energetically in her undersea swimsuit (which is like the normal one but with an air tank notch on the back). "Ah! Freud, stay focused!"

Jung's face burns as she reaches over to lever back a control. The Trilobite starts breaking up, doubtless due to the force of Oliver's attack...

... or no, not really, it seems to be sprouting terrifying JJ Abrams arms. "Amano, warm up the electrical spike and keep an eye on the torpedoes," she says. "I'm going to see if I can hold this little crab in place!"

"Torpedoes at this range?"

"Stop second-guessing me, /god/!"

Meanwhile the two lanky forearms of the expanded Trilobite lunge forwards, aiming to sink thankfully-non-GN but still high-powered steely claws into the Hygogg's tender pressurized shell.

"Tch! The torpedoes went wide!"

The front pilot of the Trilobite grimaces, even as the large cyan machine banks heavily to its left. The Daybreaker's own torpedoes shoot through the space the large underwater mobile armor once occupied as it glides through the ocean waters with a surprising ease--

--Only to be struck across its broadside with a bolt of energy. "What the hell?!" shouts the back pilot, eyes widening. "We have incoming -- it's a Z'Gok! Crusader IFFs!" "An old piece of One Year War trash?! Just shoot it down -- fire a torpedo volley and focus on the primary target!"

Two GN torpedoes launch -- and then two more, creating a wide-sweeping array of underwater warheads that shoot off, straight for the Z'Gok. The Trilobite meanwhile abruptly banks up, erupting a spray of concealing bubbles behind it as it goes. "Activate attack mode! We'll get in close and use the Electro Needles!" "Aye aye--HURK!"

The Trilobite introduces itself to an unseen depth charge in a sudden explosion just as its six claws abruptly expand outward from the main body, muffled and gurgling in the depths of the sea. The contact sends the Trilobite spiraling through the waters -- yet it /uses/ that momentum to send it /driving/ into the Daybreaker like a corkscrew, showing an uncanny degree of underwater mobility as its front-most claw arms grab onto the Daybreaker with crushing force, metal protesting beneath it as it seeks to tear off a solid chunk of the ship.

A second later, sharp needles eject from the palms of those sub-arms as they thrust forward to impale the spiked points into the depths of the ship, and if it can -- unleash powerful electrical jolts directly into their circuitry.

There are not one but two Newtypes on the Trilobite Otto's attacking. They can, collectively, see the Buckler approaching, harpoon arm at the ready, and both have that flash of insight Newtypes are known for.

This does not help when Meriden tries to go left with the actual thrusters and Elia tries to pull right by 'swimming'.

The Trilobite spins slightly, coming on broadside to the Round Buckler, which slams into its flank. The relative sizes work in Meriden's favour, the comparatively very large Trilobite not actually moving very far, but it is enough to get Elia to yelp and Meriden to grit her teeth.

"Elia! Use the legs!" Meriden tries to straighten out the rammed Trilobite, getting the harpoon out of its side while turning away from Otto. Elia, however, is not doing very well; with all the Newtypes on the field, she mostly just wants to curl up into a ball to get rid of the pressure. Meriden handles it much better, probably because she's by far the stronger of the pair.

Meriden stands up in her seat, turns around, and starts pushing buttons she can barely see while trying to steer with her other hand. It doesn't work very well; the Trilobite swerves like it's drunk, and two of the claws snap out almost randomly at the small Round Buckler.

When a unit of BAHRAM's radar start indicating little red dots, with nice little marks over them claiming 'A-LAWS', thanks to the IFF signals, most runners would probably rush for the chance to intervene. But Ascian? Ascian... oh who am I kidding, he's the exact same!

He engages the program for the speakers and lets his voice ring from the Orbital Frame's speakers - passing easily into the water, "To all A-LAWS units! You are outside of your juristiction. That is, you are on Mars - home of your so called Enders. You are /not/ wanted. This is not a warning, please prepare to die." Ascian very /calmly/ explains what is about to occur.

Then suddenly, a little red light catches his eye. An incoming unit? "They are dropping units from space as well?" The Amenthes' wings suddenly flare out, the bits moving a bit further outwards along their arc, and fabricate Metatron crystals to prepare what was about to come. "Let's see if we can cut them off before they get to do any proper maneuvering."

The Orbital Frame, still above the water, suddenly speeds forwards and begins rushing in towards the unit, hoping to stop it from touching down on the water. "Prepare dampeners, we are CATCHING it!"

Duat, of course, has to warn Ascian, "I do not think this is a good idea, sir." Which just gets a grin from the Ender. "Have I ever had any good ideas?" The Artificial Intelligence doesn't reply, it simply begins to prepare for the impact and reading the stabalizing calculations.

The Amenthes rushes forwards, a red haze of energy flowing from the Metatron crystals, pulsing at the same rate as the bioluminescent lines that rush through the 'veins' of the machine. Its right arm is hanging forwards, a violent 'crackle' of white lighting like energy coming from it as it activates a heavy duty magnet of sorts. "Raaaaaah!" Ascian calls out, somehow really getting into the battle already. He's glad to be out and fighting 'the good fight' - from his point of view anyhow. If he'd manage to catch her, a shock of electricity would flow through the enemy machine, were it not insolated enough, and at the same time magneticaly lock it to the arm of his machine. Unless, of course, it'd somehow break free.

Such passion, such vigor, such fire! Already even into the first exchange, Gai Daigouji knew his soul had lead him to his match on this battlefield of the deep! Weapons fire flies through the depths but she closes despite the possible superiority of her unit's ranged weapons, drawing into close quarters. The claw comes in and is met by the shorter limb of the Z'gok! Sparks erupt as the Hygogg's claw grazes off of the limb, deflected away and leaving Astrid open for a sudden "GEKIGAN COUNTER!" the Z'Gok striking home with it's own iron nails!

"You think something like that can defeat me?!" retorts Gai, a burst of thrust putting a few yards betwwen them, the crimson eye of the Z'gok burning like a hot coal in the night. "YOU'LL HAVE TO YELL MUCH LOUDER THEN THAT TO BEAT THE MAN WHO'S SOUL IS NAMED GAI DAIGOUJI!!!?!" he cries in answer to her challange befor the Z'gok seems to suddenly bow to it's opponent. Aw, isn't that nice, a show of respect before- HOLY CRAP IT'S COMING RIGHT AT you!!!!

Jets fire once more, porpelling the entire suit forward, it's plunt head acting like a battering ram!

"Right...right." The Captain's words were some tonic on Camille's nerves, and he recalled the greater mission. "I'm going to assist the Daybreaker, then." The implication is that they break off now that they're underwater, of course. Camille won't presume to tell the Red Comet what to attack - that man needed no aid on the hunt.

The Waverider transforms as swiftly as it did the first time, its pilot taking a few second to acclimate the weigh of water, as differeant from space or air as could be. He aims for the large trilobyte engage by several other units, weaving his way around beams, torpedoes and whatever else is in the crossfire to get at the units hull.

One beam saber snaps out as the Zeta cruises beneath the mobile armor, seawater heating and vaporizing around the blade's heat in a curtain of bubbles that thrust upwards, aiming to split the thing's belly open from steel stem to sternum.

Unfortunately for Louise, the Orbital Frame manages to catch the Superbia with that initial grapple -- but more fortunately for her, she feels completely okay with this. She has a lot better grasp of combat than she did before; one hit, especially one hit /that light/, doesn't really mean anything in the final analysis.

Though the machine is greatly slowed by the grappling line, Louise decides to just ride that line in close rather than letting it foul up her movements. GN drives have a lot of tricks -- and Louise isn't afraid to use every last one of them to her advantage. She does momentarily lament that she's facing a BAHRAM unit and not a Katharon machine... but the lament is momentary and unvoiced.

Starting simply enough, Louise decides to raise the primary long distance armament of the Superbia -- the assault lander's double beam gun -- and fires off three quick shots, trying to disable the Amenthes in as smooth and efficient a manner as possible.

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Guess we're on the same side for today, Katharon units."

In a little cabin aboard the Daybreaker, a poor young girl with the misfortune to be born a powerfully empathic (but otherwise essentially powerless) Newtype has curled herself into a little ball. She's more used to sensing animals - she's actually quite good with marine life, thanks to her power, actually - but now? So much pressure! "Nnnngh...all these people...make them go away..."

But no one is currently paying much attention to Megumi Higashibara. She's locked herself in her room, after all. On the command deck, Captain Elizabeth is laughing. "AHAHAHAHA! That's the stuff! Here the came! And...yaaah!" The wheel spins wildly as the Trilobite dives for the Dabyreaker. The submarine's gun turrets fire, specially made to work underwater - but they go wide, as the ship suddenly speeds past them, arcing around quickly enough to send people rolling around in their bunks as it turns to face them once more. That's a fast submarine, apparently!

"ALL RIGHT! Now, let's show them who we are! ESTER!" "Captain?" "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" "Aye aye!" The pale, young-looking woman holds onto her seat as Elizabeth draws her sword, holding it forward. "CHARGE!" And then it becomes clear why the Ship of Aurora has a massive, sharp-edged wedge on the front. It charges directly at the Trilobite, as Elizabeth laughs loudly. People aren't usually prepared for when a battleship charges them.

Oliver's Hygogg gets steely-clawed, scraping against the armor and leaving significant gashes on the outside. Oliver bites his lip, checking the monitor for damage. If this thing takes too much, he'll have to evacuate before it fills with water, he reasons. But it's still fine for now...and a guard doesn't run away without good reason!

"What a strange-looking fish machine," he mutters to himself. Jung will sense nothing particularly Newtypey about the pilot, or anything remotely psychic at all; if she's observing his movements, he seems to be fighting in a more defensive, careful manner, making swift movements and trying to calculate a good place to hit. Not terribly hot-blooded, at that. In fact, Oliver is trying to figure out a good chink in the big Trilobite's armor, eventually opting to aim for the joints where the left arm is sprouting from.

Swimming in closer, the Hygogg reaches in to try to strike against the arm-joint with its big, silly-looking hand.

Protesting silently, the mysterious pilot codenamed 'Racetrack', looks at his screens and tries to spread his shoulders in the small cockpit, which only adds to his discomfort. "I hate Mars." He said to himself, wondering what Leos Klein might be thinking now. This kind of thing happening on his land. This almost made the mysterious pilot roar in laughter.

As torpedoes and various other implements of destruction sail past the unit, the pilot inside it narrows his eyes, scanning the environment. At first, several torpedo tubes open, firing minor ordinance at apparently random directions, before two of them suddenly converge, changing directions, apparently carried by the blasts of the other exploding torpedoes, and on towards Ribbons Almark's Trilobite.

Ribbons Almark's Trilobite may suddenly detect another unit with Katharon IFF shooting torpedoes on it.

"Yelling?" That actually catches Astrid off guard for a half-second. It sinks in fairly quickly, though, that this guy is likely a bit crazy too. She scratched it, a proverbial taste of blood, and she just wants more. Machine cannon fire ricochets off the Hygogg as it lurches back, bringing its impossible limbs up in an attempt to counter the Z'gok's charge with beam fire from one of its taloned hands. This fails, and the bulky mobile suit jerks back when struck and then starts to sink. There's a sizable dent in its armored hull, and Astrid starts laughing. "Louder yellin', huh? Heh heh.. Hahaha..!" Rearing back in her chair, the redhead's glasses fall away, as she presents her screens with an almost-fanged grin, "I like you!" Leaning forward, she wrenches on her controls, twisting the Hygogg into a recovery and swirling its arms back into an aiming position, "You sure have guts, I'll give you that! BUT DON'T THINK THAT MEANS I WON'T KILL YOU!!" There's a brief powerup before both beam cannons open up, unleashing several green-tinted bolts in an upward arc at Gai's Z'gok, overhead.

With so much heat landing on the lead Trilobite, it seems a simple decision for the Man forming the rear guard; take some of the heat away, and get it out of the kitchen. To that end, the GINN WASP begins unleashing with a series of torpedoes from the bazooka-like launcher it's carrying. The target? The Zeta, which happens to be sensing the remarkable pressure that's being exerted from the GINN.

Whoever inside must be one powerful Newtype! Paptimus Scirocco finishes adjusting his hair, releasing his finger off the trigger after the third torpedo releases and begins tracking down the Waverider.

The Amenthes, holding the Superbia still, quickly lets go again when the GN drive fueled unit raises its beam gun. Its left arm, shifting into a sword, quickly 'knocks' the rifle out of the way with a quick sweep - landing the flat of the weapon against it, before its movements quickly take it downwards closer to the water. Knowing that gravity is less here than it is on Earth, he knows it will take a bit longer for the opposing unit to fall further down, but... it /will/ fall down. Unlike Orbital Frames, those things didn't have a neigh infinite source of energy.

The BAHRAM machine is now hanging with its back facing directly to the water, and its cockpit sticking up into the air. Ascian was so glad that more proper belts had been installed into the Amenthes. Ascian's gaze quickly flicks across a few vid-windows, concentrated on different parts of the enemy unit. "We have to be careful of the blades at its arm." Ascian mutters to himself, and who-ever was 'listening' inside of his frame.

The tendril-like tailfeathers of the phoenix stylized Orbital Frame suddenly set themselves ablaze with the light of red Metatron energy, pulsing and flickering like red embers amidst a fire, jumping from the red crystals set at the spade ended 'tailfeathers'. "Let's get this over with quickly, Duat!" Ascian speaks to his artificial intelligence. "Roger that." It replies, guiding the will of the framerunner through the machine, and interpretting it for itself.

A little window quickly comes up, selecting from what seems like a drop-down menu for a few japanese characters. "Let's do it!" The glow at the tailfeathers suddenly begins to form more solid of a figure, compressing space around the energy in the shape of a series of spheres, which still emit those ember-like entities. "Phoenix Burst STORM!" Ascian announces, speakers engaging. Since when did he get that talkative? And since when is he announcing his attack names? Let's blame mister Gai Daigouji for this for the time being. But then, Sanger had once had a similar effect on the blue haired young man.

The 'tailfeathers' sweep, the prehensile tendrils lunging forwards, past the sides of the orbital frame, and the energy-laden orbs flare past the machine like balls of fire, rushing straight for the Superbia GN-X, preparing to impact and unleash their deadly payload.

It's a Z'Gok alright, but this is far from the old One Year War model. The ReFined Z'Gok is made of cutting edge technology by the Oldsmobile Army and is more than capable of competing with the A-Laws aquatic design... as is proven as the bulky machine shrugs off the torpedo hits with relative ease. "Heh... I guess you're bosses haven't given you the headsup on just what's going on here on Mars! That just means I can carve the lesson into your hide!" The RF machine speeds up, covering the distance in a surprisingly short amount of time as it pulls back it's hands. The claws quickly superheat themselves, glowing red hot as the water around them begin to bubble and boil from contact. "Now get off my PLANET!" One claw strikes out for the side of the Trilobite, followed quickly by the other into the very same gap. Then with immense strength, Erika rips the claws out sideways to tear the entire side of the mobile suit open.

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Get them, miss Keese! And don't hesitate to ask for assistance. We don't want a repeat of the submarine incident."

Louise Halevy brings the Superbia out of the way of the incoming phoenix-feathers, the body of the machine completely unharmed by the burst of energy and the tendrils. Keep it tight, Louise -- it's not that hard up here, if you really focus on what you're doing and keep a level head.

Louise looks over her suite of weapons for a few seconds; she doesn't have anything /quite/ powerful enough to take out an Orbital Frame in one shot, but she's got a few things that could do it in a few shots. The double beam gun continues to look very attractive -- the missiles, maybe, too... but she can't get a good cross-section of locks slowed down like this. Maybe in a little bit.

Sticking to the double beam gun, Louise sends her machine into a high-speed sideways whirl, bombarding the Amenthes with shot after shot of supercharged GN particles. She doesn't shout anything out, and she /certainly/ doesn't give it some ridiculous name. It's just a weapon and he's just an enemy.

"Come on, Elia, we're kind of fighting right now!" Meriden gives up on trying to operate both consoles at once and drops back into her own. "You can't just sit around! Worry later, okay? I know there's a lot of pressure, but - "

Outside, the Trilobite starts moving more normally as Meriden pilots properly. It banks to the side - not far enough to dodge the torpedoes but far enough away quickly enough to reduce the impact slightly.

Otto gets a response. "I'm doing just fine! And I'm not going to let you steal from the city! You're just going to take people's stuff?" Meriden takes only moderate aim before launching a volley of the GN torpedoes, the glowing sparks lancing through the dark sea in a sprayed cone, assisted by the slightly-more-helpful Elia now that she's over her brief fit.

"I'm going to show you how it's done! We are, I mean!" Meriden isn't entirely used to announcing for two people. She was going to say more, but Elia turned the communications off. "And - what'd you do that for?"

"You talk way too much," Elia says, morose again. "He's just going to find you more easily if you're broadcasting."

"You're like the worst copilot ever."

Now she's getting into it! Particle beams lance up at Gai, pounding the solid armor of the Z'gok soundly again and again! Causing it to seem to boil and rupture, the machine rattling and shaking violently even as it races down towards Astrid's Hygogg! Gai bounces around in the confices of his pilot's harness, his music player skipping and almost shaken free of it's tape, causing it to skip on it's looped play list of the Gekigangar III opening theme! But just like the theme, Gai just keeps on going! The iron nails rapidly heat, the water around them erupting into a cloud of steam bubbles as they streak towards Astrid's unit, falling just short!

A cackle erupts from the mad-eyed pilot in the OYW suit, his toothy grin almost threatening to split his face in half! "More, more! Show me your passion, hit me as hard as you can! Let me show you the spirit of a hero let me show you the soul of a man on fire with love, friendship and justice! I WILL SHOW YOU HOW A MAN WITH BURNING BLOOD FIGHTS!!!" he roars, feet crushing down on gthe pedels beneath them, the Z'gok's thruster output abruptly spiking as Gai spurs it onwards, the unit lurching forward in a sudden charge, it's right arm thrust forward, claws burning brightly as it hones in on the form of his foe!

"GEKIGAN FLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!"

All around Staren, battle breaks out.

It sounds _weird_. He's used to the quiet of space, or the normal sound of atmosphere. Everything is strange in the water. The Star Hawk slowly flies through the water. Over the radio he hears Otto is damaged. Dammit! Where is that guy? And talk of trilobites... He sees one, in the murky depths. "There!" He raises his giga-launcher and fires, a massive torpedo trailing bubbles behind as it lazily makes its way towards the A-LAWS machine!

Oliver's girlish slap is actually quite effective. The advanced carbon compounds making up the Trilobite are durable, yes, but they also have physical characteristics which can't really be argued with, one of which is that they aren't very thick. The arm does not break, but it does go partially out of joint...

And Jung herself exclaims hotly, "I can't believe this shit!! Is that one of those high-performance mod machines? I didn't think they made one for the Hygogg!!"

Kazumi sighs, behind her, and reaches out to press a button with one pink-painted and elegantly manicured nail. She then steers a trackball.

The long trailing electrical 'plug' behind the Trilobite arcs around then, aiming to slam with shocking force into the belly of the Hygogg. Jung sags back in her chair, mildly relieved even as the Trilobite itself 'swims' back fractionally -- perhaps she is more confident of engaging with torpedoes than with claws after that brutal Hygogg judo maneuver.

"We? Are there several of you in there?" Otto asks, a frown splitting across his lips. "We are helping a national independence movement! It fits the values that the Earth Federation originally was to protect, such as self-determination and--"

Elia cuts the communications link, then, which makes Otto's brow furrow. She hung up on him! The Neo-Austrian pilot scowls, but he quickly has something else to worry about. A volley of torpedoes is hurtling up at him, whipping in towards the underwater machine. He throws it into a series of tight maneuvers, turning the Cordless Buckler through the torpedoes that come whisking by. He breathes hard, as his machine rises upward.

It comes over the Trilobite. His fingers flip switches rapidly -- and drop disc-shaped bombs downward, one after the other, at the long body of the Trilobite. They detonate, sending shockwaves of water and blasts of flame down towards the huge machine.

"Tssk." - "We missed!" - "I noticed!" Ascian and Duat converse for a short moment as the 'flaming' orbs fail to strike their target. The enemy machine, moving past the bursts of energy at speeds much unexpected to by Ascian, continues to move out of the way and direct line upwards which the Ender had established, and begins her sideways roll, firing the double beam gun at him.

Reacting, almost instinctively, Ascian sends his own unit straight into the water close below, still aimed upwards, hoping that the refraction of the liquid will dampen any chances of the enemy hitting. Relying on the near perfect visuals Duat is still managing to provide to him, Ascian speeds through the water, waving in and out as beams rush past him through the water, causing it to bubble furiously. "Tssk!" The Orbital Frame suddenly rocks, as part of the right side of the machine is scorched, a beam striking a bit too close for comfort.

A quick indicator of the Amenthes' status is indicated, the right side of the torso showing slightly yellow-green. "We're fine." Ascian says to himself. Who is that 'we' he is talking about? It doesn't matter. The Orbital Frame suddenly bursts out of the water, and shows that the both of its arms have changed form into what looks like a /rifle/ of sorts. Laden with a red glow of energy at the sides, bioluminescent lines quickly flowing from the core of the machine to the ends of the weapons, it is not hard to realize that the Amenthes is charging them up.

A targetting reticule is displayed neatly over the Superbia, and a little 'ticking' sound plays in the cockpit. A little red dot is indicating of the cockpit, but Ascian just /can't/ get the dot of the reticule aimed at it. Fine, let's not go for the critical hit then. He pushes his will into the machine, his hands firming around the half-orb controls, and the unit fires a series of beams, much like his enemy had, only whilst shooting through the surface of the water, upside-down, instead of moving sideways.

As the Zeta breaks off, Hyaku Shiki releases its grip and is quickly stopped by water resistance. It floats above the battlefield for a moment, supported by attached buoyancy chambers, the pilot getting a sense of the conflict through a passive scan.

Quattro furrows his brow. "Are they just here to fight? It's not much of a trap. Unless..."

The Hyaku Shiki engages its reinforced jets, slipping through the water, upward away from the chaos. It crests over the enemy rearguard, which is itself dissolving in order to engage the likely unexpected number of Katharon combatants. Naturally, Quattro is detected-- but with speed and the urgency of the ferocious Katharon assault on his side, he only peels off a few bogeys.

The golden mobile suit's hand flips down, revealing a rack of missiles in its wrist. The AEUG suit makes dear use of its extra hovering time to exchange vulcan fire with the surfacing A-LAWS interceptors, darting between lines of fire. "That's a mistake!" he hisses. On the surface, his overcharged beam rifle snipes a pair of the attackers, the third sent off with dumb-fire grenades piercing the ocean to trail him as makeshift depth charges.

Before further harassment can break off from the engagement to chase him down, Quattro brings the Hyaku Shiki back underwater, evading ship-based fire from the Largos-Gallina and its support security. With some time to itself, Hyaku Shiki locates a crevice in the bottom of the city-ship, magnetizing to the hull.

Moments later, Quattro surfaces on the side of the ship, keeping up with it thanks to a torpedo-like diving propulsion device. Through the violent chop generated by the ship, he levels a grappling hook and quickly zips up the side, throwing himself over the railing. He unholsters his pistol before tying the rope off.

"Astonaige probably won't be too happy about that flooded cockpit," he thinks.

"Hah!" Astrid wrenches her controls, twisting the Hygogg deeper while also pulling just out of the Z'gok's reach. She whirls around once again to face the bulkier unit, just in time for Gai's renewed vigor and burning blood to spur him onward. The woman twists her controls once again, rapidly ascending. This spares the body from taking a severe hit, but those wickedly heated claws burn into the Hygogg's leg right through the bulk of it, puncturing the pressure seals. Red light floods her cockpit, and the redhead growls, removing a hand from the control stick to dance over her console. Emergency seals lock off the missing leg, preventing the body from flooding, but it's filling with water and weighing her down.

"Damnit..!" Astrid grits her teeth, testing her mobile suit's degrading mobility. It's definately decreasing, and that's pissing her off. Her gaze flits from the consoles to her screen, the Hygogg's red eye flitting about until she relocates her target - Still in close proximity, "If that's how a man fights... Then I must be a man!" She twists the control sticks, then thrusts them forward, laughing. The Hygogg coils its arms, diving at the Z'gok, "Even if you kill me, I'll rip you apart! I'll tear you to pieces!" Once she's close enough, both arms lash out, one trying to spear the other Zeon suit's torso while the other goes for the symbolic red mono-eye, "RIP AND TEAR!"

The Trilobite thrusts its Electro Needles into nothing more than watery space as its main pilot curses. Tracking the movements of the Ship of Aurora, he turns his head around and narrows his eyes in confusion and irritation.

"Just what the hell is powering that thing, anyway?! Stay still, dammit!" grunts out the man, gripping onto his mobile armor's controls. "Turn us around! We'll aim for their turbines--" "Wait, we've got something coming in fast!" "Wha--"

Water and metal superheats in a matter of seconds the moment the Zeta's beam sword greets the belly of the Trilobite in a superficial cut across the armor's cyan surface. For Camille's troubles, he gets the sudden unloading of a volley of GN torpedoes seeking to imbed themselves into the Zeta's armor and inject it full of a payload of GN-T particles. Which is about when the Giga Launcher of the Star Hawk fires; the Trilobite shunts /downward/ only to be intercepted by the torpedos of Jack-O's machine. Explosions ripple across the Trilobite, heat diffused across water as the pilots of the mobile armor are knocked forward in their seat. "Ghn--! Fire the torpedoes! We'll hit them at every angle!"

Torpedos fire off, one large warhead shot off from the Trilobite's frontmost launch tube, aimed for the Star Hawk, the rest spreading for Jack-O's Buckler. "We've got incoming -- it's the Ship of the Aurora! They're trying to ram us!" "What?! Dammit -- give me full thrust! We'll see which one of us is faster!"

The Trilobite LAUNCHES forward at that note, churning up a gout of water as it slices through the oceans. The Z'Gok latches on with superheated claws /right/ when it is about to turn just to the left; while the claws aren't strong enough to tear the Trilobite's impressive armor open, it /is/ enough additional weight that it cannot get out of the submarine's way in time; the broadside of the Daybreaker collides with the starboard side of the Trilobite's chassis, friction momentarily generating sparks before it is simply knocked aside. As the Z'Gok's heat claws tear through metal, the Trilobite's own grappling claws /grip/ onto the smaller underwater mobile suit to /tear/ it free and /toss/ it away...

... at which point the entire Trilobite shudders... ... and LANCES forward, pointed nose first, to DRIVE itself into Erika's Z'Gok-- --and continue on, aimed right for the side of the Daybreaker at full speed.

This time, Louise isn't so lucky; the series of beam shots catches Louise's machine in the heavy mounted pack, nearly knocking it off and leaving a pretty nasty burn mark. It's not an irrecoverable injury, but it's an injury -- and it brings a big frown to Louise's face.

She should probably unload the enormous payloads from this terrible thing before it gets too damaged to use, she thinks; needless to say, she wastes no time in doing just that. The machine is starting to speed up a little after that grapple, too -- which means she can /finally/ get what she'd been hoping for all along:

A missile lock.

Or, more accurately, 30 missile locks. Little beeps emit from Louise's console over and over again as she strafes around Amenthes and Ascian, each one a unique firing solution... and when Louise does a quick roll down in the water after Ascian, she lets loose with each and every missile, whirling around each other in an impossible wake.

"-What is THAT?!" The Trilobite's...tail emerges and tries to zap Oliver's Hygogg. He jets backwards quickly, leaving himself just out of reach of that electrical weapon. That could have been terribly painful if it hit, depending on how well this machine conducts electricity. Hopefully the cockpit is insulated...?

He shakes his head and recovers his composure, looking back up at the big Trilobite. Right, so aiming for joints works well-it's big enough that simply hitting any part of its armor probably won't do a great deal of good. It's another joint area on the side that he aims for as he opens the hands of the Hygogg, firing off a barrage of speedy missiles at his Jung-piloted target.

Erika grits her teeth as her mobile suit is send hurtling head over heels. Thankfully, in the martian ocean, the tumble is far slower and more easy to recover from, so she has little difficulty in regaining control. Also, god bless the man who invented Panaramic Cockpits. Easily spotting the massive Trilobite coming at her from above and to the left. Erika triggers a quick burst from her hydrojets and zips right out of the way as the mobile armor passes underneath. "You may be bigger, but I'm better!" With a quick flip, Erika rights herself and leans her Z'Gok forward. A moment later, the six tubes mounted in the top of the head snap open and a swarm of torpedos flies out towards the rear of the Trilobite.

Quite suddenly, Camille Bidan finds himself in hell. Torpedo hell.

"What the?!" Bogeys on the left, right and everything in between according the radar. Someone besides the Trilobyte had taken his bait, and the Newtype had a fair guess to who. "It will take more than this!" He resolves, ejecting flares from the Zeta's aft quadrant to confuse the heat sensors of the closer missiles which fall astray and collider with their fellows, causing a chain reaction that obscures all to be seen withing a good 500 foot radius if furious steam bubbles.

The Zeta emerges, miraculously unharmed, dead set for the GINN Wasp. "You're mine!!!" The AEUG ace declares, a purple line a beam fire arcing through the waters to support the claim.

The Cordless Buckler, piloted by 'Racetrack', spins away from the Torpedo just as it explodes behind the unit, sending a shockwave that shakes the entire unit, but not enough to damage it.

"This data is all wrong..." Jack-O says inside his unit. There's a intense presure wave coming from somewhere, and he can't really pin-point it's location. It's messing up things.. disarraying it. For a moment, this mysterious pilot closes his eyes. "No point in thinking about that right now." He tells himself as he once again looks at the screens that output raw data, somehow managing to keep up with them.

"I need to try to stay low-key, here. Don't want everyone to think I'm a ace..." He tells himself as he allows the Trilobite piloted by Mr Almark to lance by. Though, despite what he said earlier, he just /has/ to take advantage of the speeding Trilobite.

Several Depth Charges are shot from the Cordless Buckler, somewhere in front of Ribbons' Trilobite, arranging in a pattern that would hopefully send explosions across the hull of his unit, unless 'Racetrack's aim somehow became a lot worse than it used to be.

"Alright, just this once. And than back to regular pilot.."

The Depth Charges explode.

IS ERIKA BETTER??

Well, she's about to find out!

From out of seemingly nowhere a GINN WASP comes blazing up upon the Z'Gok, several torpedoes firing from their salvos at the DC-allied unit. Within, Healing is still pouting visibly. She does not like these clunky and totally lame underwater-type units. Where is her Gadessa? Her sweet new Arche Drei!?

"Argh, I'll sink your ass so fast you'll never know what hit you!" Healing angrily shouts, thin green brows furrowed angrily.

HIGASHIBARA UPDATE: She has moved to whimpering and hugging her knees.

Meanwhile, MAKI calmly reports again. "Enemy unit has engaged multiple targets, but primary danger is impact. It has avoided major damage from our wedge." "What? They're trying a counter-ram? Those idiots!" Elizabeth spens the wheel widely...but these are close quarters. While the Daybreaker makes a wide arc, it is unable to get fully out of the way...and the Trilobite scrapes across its port edge, scraping away armor.

Elizabeth scowls. "They scratched our paint! We'll have to take pay for that out of their booty!" She turns. "CLARA!" The small cat on the bridge, whom Bright Noa might have assumed to be silent, stretches. "Captain?" "Prepare the amplifiers." "Aye aye." The cat walks over to Noa, rubbing against his leg. "Hey, could you move, please?" She hops onto a console, pushing some buttons.

Elizabeth reaches down and picks up a microphone from the edge of a console. She turns on the intercom. "All crew, cover your ears. That means you too, Bright Noa." And, indeed, all of the crew is now putting in earplugs, save Clara the cat, who puts her paws over her ears.

Elizabeth takes a deep breath. Speakers along the submarine go live. She closes her eyes. "Preparing to fire the Elizabeth Cannon." Pause. Another deep breath, then she shuts at the top her lungs. It actually shakes the command deck - and from there, it's amplified before coming out of the speakers, which have been focused on the Trilobite.

She doesn't /need/ amplifiers - they just help.

"ELIZABETH CANNOOOOOOON!"

"...." "...." "...."

"I hate Mars," grumps Admiral Bright. Between screaming submarine captains and talking cats, this about hits his limit of things he can endure.

"That's more like it, Duat." Ascian is grinning widely now, looking at the vid-window which is showing the confirmed hits, and the damage he's done to the enemy machine - showing little black fumes of smoke. The Orbital Frame quickly dives back into the water upon finishing its initial assault, and begins to change direction as the enemy unit tries to spin circles around it.

"What are they doing." Ascian follows the Superbia's movements on camera as it begins to get its missile lock. "Whatever it is... I don't like it!" The wings shift direction, and the unit suddenly stops abruptly, leaving the framerunner almost biting his lip as the G-forces push on his body.

From there, it suddenly splashes straight up, out of the water, leaving a gigantic splash of water following the unit - pearls of water darting into seperate directions. The red light of Metatron energy refracts beautifully off of the water, for a moment making it look like the water which is moving up is a pool of translucent lava - the 'Phoenix' rises from.

The source of this massive quantity of light quickly begins apparently, the tailfeathers having formed a 'cone' around one single giant ball of compressed space, holding firey energy. The arms are aimed downwards, and the machine begins unleashing a series of energy shots as the missiles come flowing from different directions.

The Amenthes, maneuverable and a unit for high-velocity combat, twirls around, picking off the imcoming attacks with extreme accuracy. Ascian is leaning forward in his machine, his eyes quickly moving inside of the sockets as he picks out the heatsignatures of the projectiles, guiding the two rifle-arms, until the last bolt takes out the final missile - leaving a gigantic series of explosions in the air.

That's when the giant orb at the bottom of the unit comes into play. Pulsing, spitting embers, and generally not looking too inviting to get hit by, the object suddenly launches at high-velocity, straight at the opposing unit. If not the unit, at least it would hit the water and send severe shockwaves throughout the area. Surely, that sound at least manage to shake up the pilot of his GN-X opponent.

Meriden Almace continues to bicker, a little, with her copilot. Fortunately, with the radio off, nobody can hear it.

Until she gets it back on, anyway. "It's a two-man vehicle! - Two-woman vehicle!" Nobody in it is male. "And what you're doing is robbing people. I know pirates, my family's been robbed by them before. So I'm not going to let you do it!"

Explosions rock the Trilobite but don't slow it down. Meriden has the metaphysical bit in her teeth and is not going to let go; she swings the machine about, pointing the larger torpedo launchers at the small Round Buckler. She fires; instead of a cloud of little ones, there are two very large ones this time, exploding with enough force and heat to vapourize water and send plumes of superheated bubbles upwards and out.

Meriden feels a shockwave run through her body from somewhere in the distance. She looks down, trying to figure out if the Trilobite is vibrating, and then at the displays. Is someone...screaming?

"Kill you?!" retorts Gai in shock and almost horror! Perhaps this gives him a moment of pause, his jaw gone slack, his hands on the controls looseing their holds on the controls. Suddenly she is upon him! One claw diving deep into the middle of the suit, a shriek of metal against metal crying out into the depths, the tips of her claws erupting from the machine's back! If that wasn't bad enough the other dives in, gauging past the protective slit and under the domed helm to crash through the eye, Gai's primary view screen flooded with a wave of static even as his helmet almost crashes into the monitor from the impact... he is blind there in the depth, and she is so very, very angry.

"Keh, who said anything about killing you!?" he retorts, shaking off the aches that came from his harness' restraint of his form. "I'm a hero! A Hero!" he announced aloud, his hands coiling tightly on the controls, the machine so eager to respond. "When a hero finds a enemy who's heart bruns with rightousness, he does not slay them! He shows them the way through his own heart, his soul!" he prattles on. "I will show you. I will show you the heart of this man, this heart that beats with love, truth, and justice! I will show you a heart filled with GEKIGANGAR!"

Suddenly, a claw lashes out, trying to catch hold of her frame. He cannot see her, but he can feel her. Not even the depths of the martian ocean can hide the blaze of her heart from him!

"GAI!"

His voice erupts in a bellowed cry, the right claw abruptly opening and then closing in a muted clash of it's iron nails, the tines of the claw heating once more, gleaming red in the darkness.

"SUUUUUUPEEEEEER!!"

The right arm swings low, cocking near the machine's hip, poised like the hammer of a revolver.

"UPPER!!!"

The arm flies as if launched by the pull of a trigger, streaking upwards in a powerful punch that carried such force that high above them a gyser of water erupted from the ocean!

That beam proves dead-on. So dead-on in fact, that it pierces the torpedo that was just launching from the GINN-WASP type, so that as the blast pierces through the ZAFT unit's armor, so too does the torpedo rock it back and away, floundering in the water as debris fills the sea.

Inside, the Man from Jupiter lets out a thoughtful sound. He does not panic; Scirocco never panics. Instead he simply operates, flicking buttons and switches, righting the errant propulsion of the underwater mobile suit. Initially, it may seem that the Waverider has earned a clean one-shot kill, especially with the cloud of murky debris that's obscuring vision.

But the field of debris splits apart, as a massive blast of blue energy surges through the water, heating, evaporating everything in its path. It's a path that culminates with where the maneuvering Zeta Gundam will be. "Hmph, I bet he thinks himself an ace pilot by now," Scirocco comments to himself, guiding the WASP through the debris and into closer proximity. Even underwater, the Zeta no doubt has the edge.

The Trilobite's arms are more agile than they look. One arcs upwards and down sharply, grasping Oliver's forearms and pushing them downwards, sending his missiles down to the martian seabed!

This is a rather awkward position for the Trilobite, however; it is holding down the smaller unit's arms. Its lashing electro tail snaps back, but Jung takes command sufficiently to say through the miracle of Touch Talk: "This is the face of oceanic combat now!"

"Something like that," Amano says in the background, calmly.

Jung continues, sounding still annoyed. "You've come all the way out to Mars just to end up ripped apart -- is it really that worth it to support piracy?!"

Jung then shifts the Trilobite, the two claws not able to get much into action. But the other four? Oh, and WHY DOES IT HAVE FOUR MORE HOOK-TIPPED CLAW ARMS?

Jung doesn't know, but she doesn't complain, even as they lunge up to try and rip apart the Hygogg. Fortunately this loosens the grip on the arms, and may give Oliver /his one chance/.

"We're more than pirates!" Otto snaps back. He grimaces and looks down at the Trilobite. His eyes narrow, as he sees the two large torpedoes firing up at his machine. He squeezes the trigger twice, loosing two torpedoes of his own. The smaller torpedoes snake and whip in, and ram down the center of the larger GN torpedoes. The explosions are brilliant, sending particles of light rushing above the surface of the water with the huge splash of water that bubbles up.

The fiery blasts fade -- and the Buckler sits there, untouched by the explosions. "Where is your family from?" he asks Meriden, with a thought.

He remembers the basics of engineering school and mecha design. A few systems were considered absolutely critical to continued function -- and one is movement systems. The Buckler drops downward, suddenly, barreling inward. The harpoon arm extends, as the water jets fire rapidly -- and he tries to punch the harpoon arm into the Trilobite's central water jets, in the rear.

The Superbia GN-X is struck with phoenix flame, the pulsating orb ripping through its defenses. This time it's the legs -- which means that, fortunately, the actual assault lander equipment stays intact. All Louise thinks she needs out of it is one or two good, solid hits... and fortunately, though she's wasted almost all of her missiles, she still has a few more means of putting out the hurt with that thing before she's spent.

She rears the Superbia back for a second, dipping into the water and keeping her machine pointed squarely toward Ascian and the Amenthes. The Superbia's arms reach back into the pack for just a moment -- there's something in here, something usually used for demolitions... but in a pinch, it could serve her purposes here, too.

Abruptly speeding forward and blowing past the Amenthes, Louise gives something a quick, forceful hurl in the machine's direction. At first, it may not be clear just what's happened.

Then there's an explosion.

Oh.

Quattro Bajeena stalks the outer security ring of the city-ship. Though its builders and operators have likely gone over the defense protocol when dealing with boarders coming up from the side of the ship, the sheer size of the craft and the hectic battle situation it has become the focus of make the AEUG captain's job a lot more easy.

The red-suited ace makes a run toward a low wall, releasing a pressure valve on the side of his helmet once he is in cover. The air equalizes and his helmet defogs mildly. 'The security would probably be heavier if we were in the Earth Sphere,' he thinks. 'But out here on Mars...'

Something driving. Quattro peeks over the edge of his hiding spot, and then vaults into the transport lane, raising his pistol at the oncoming mini-transport. The driver slams on the breaks, skidding his vehicle sideways as he fumbles for his own pistol. Quattro fires a round into the pavement near him. "Hands up! Out of the transport!"

With the unlucky driver bound wrists and ankles by zip-ties, Quattro takes off toward the nearest command center as indicated by the onboard map and previously taken surveillance. There's an alarm out for him, of course, but there's a lot of alarms on that ship right now.

Erika jerks up as though a silent warning alarm just went off in her head and before she even thinks, her machine is already moving. Torpedoes streak by mere moments later and explode against the ocean fly, shuddering the burly frame of the RF Z'Gok. "Tch, damn, that was too close..." Thank god for Newtype Psychic Bullshit, cheating death for the umpteenth time. "Sorry, but the only thing sinking here are your chances, Fed!" The Z'Gok accelerates, sweeping through the water in a wide cirlce around the GINN Wasp, only to turn in briefly to unleashes another round of torpedoes.
 * FLASH!*

Oliver was just admitting to getting used to how the Hygogg handled, but he has to admit it doesn't do a very great job of breaking out of a hold. Those four claw arms tear at the Hygogg, doing significant damage to the armor this time and leaving one of the legs hanging uselessly. Thankfully, it doesn't really need /legs/ to swim, does it? The loosened grip does give the pilot enough time to slam on the thrusters and swim out of the monster machine's grip, but the damage has already been done.

And radio contact has been initiated, it seems! He's being accused of piracy! Which is technically the truth, but on the other hand...

"We all have our duties, Ma'am!" Yes, he really told her.

Even if he isn't terribly good at banter-and in fact, not even really loud enough for it-he's still kicking, or in this case, shooting at the Jungviathan with both of the hand cannons at once.

Staren's not used to underwater maneuvering! He tries to get out of the way of the torpedoes but is too! damn! slow! The Star hawk is enveloped in a shower of GN particles and covered in bubbles of steam as its surface is superheated. If this keeps up he'll be down and out in no time! He has to down that trilobite, quickly! The Star Hawk rushes... slightly faster through the water as it closes to melee, and then out come the hybrid swords... The beam blades covering the edges are less effective in the water, but the metal swords should work fine! "Rrgh... let's see how you like this!" He tries to stab deep into the underwater suit!

Astrid growls. It's a primal sound, not one of anger, as she applies pressure on the claws embedded in the Z'gok's body in an attempt to wrench the machine in opposite directions. Her lip curls upward slightly, "Eh? You're a hero? Don't you know the people here are fighting for their own freedom?!" She pulls back, wrenching the hygogg's arm from her victim's torso, "Do you even know what side you're on?! You make me sick, fighting for dictators!" The beam cannon in that fist begins to power up, but then a clawed fist impacts against her mobile suit's torso, "--Ghk..!" The impact knocks Astrid's hands from the controls briefly, and the charge cycle for the beam cannon interrupts. Quickly recovering in her harnass, the woman tries to pry her suit free, unloading with the torso machineguns in an futile effort to get loose, "Damn..! Damn..!" The impact blacks out the screens around Astrid for a notable second, knocking the Hygogg up and away in an exaggerated arc due to the motion-restricting nature of the water around it. Trailing sparks and bubbles, an enormous caved-in slash marks the mobile suit's torso. Inside, Astrid groans, righting herself and feeling for the bump on her head, "Careless..! Takin' on water.. This bum leg's slowin' me down..." Dancing her fingers over the console, explosive bolts burst around the left hip. The leg begins to fall away. She vents the ballast in the rear tank, compensating for the flooding forward ballast tank that'd been ruptured, "This is going south fast..." Quickly, she pulls her helmet down over her face, clipping it in place and turning on the air supply, "Enough playin' around! You wanna show me what kind of bleeding heart hero you are?!" The Hygogg rights itself, finally becoming neutral bouyant, missing a leg, its body torn open, but it still has those wirey multi-purpose arms. Twisting, the machine thrusts one arm forward, panels on the bulky missile pod flipping open and exposing the large rockets inside, "Then stop naming your weapons like some little kid! Be a man! Make choices of your own instead of just doing what some guy with stripes on his arm tells you to! The way you are..." Smoke and bubbles erupt around Astrid's mech as a pair of missiles launch, arcing through the water at the Z'gok, "You're no better than Zeon!"

"Dammit," curses the Trilobite's front operator. "We need some time to reload. Enter evasive actions! When the time's right, we'll unload on them again! Don't let them shoot us down!"

"Got it!" responds the other officer, his teeth gritting. Yanking to the left with his controls, the Trilobite abruptly /springs/ through the waters, its grappler claws all collapsing inward until the Trilobite once more looks like a sleek, cyan and red arrowhead.

This comes /just/ as the Z'Gok's torpedos fire. The volley of explosives come out fast -- and yet the large mobile armor spins and weaves through all of them with an unusual grace, GN particle output creating massive waves of bubbles across its frame to help obscure its position.

The depth charges follow just moments after the Trilobite abruptly reverses its momentum, literally swiming /backwards/ through water as explosions ripple /just/ beyond the reach of it, heat warbling beside the Trilobite and force scraping across the surface of the machine.

G-ghh," spits out the foremost pilot. "They're coming at all sides! Are the torpedos loaded?!" "We should be clear!" "Fine then! Engage attack mo--"

'ELIZABETH CANNOOOOOOON!'

Raw sonic force RIPS past the Trilobite with such force that it sends it careening violently to the left -- a fact that, rather fortunately, launches it JUST out of the way of the Starhawk's heated attack. The pilot's orders are drowned out even as the mobile armor's grappler claws SPRING forward once more. "Wh-what the hell was that!?" shouts the front A-LAWS officer, his ears ringing so badly he can't even hear himself talk.

"WHAT?!" "I said WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" "THAT'S NOT VERY NICE, DON'T CALL ME FAT!" "N-- DAMMIT, JUST SHOOT THE TORPEDOS!"

And, in fact, /all/ the tubes open in perfect sync; the Trilobite looks full of holes for a moment before GN-powered explosives LAUNCH from the depths of the mobile armor, spreading out wide -- the bulk of it, in particular, aimed for the Ship of Aurora, to make it a veritable pincushion of steel warheads IMPALING through thick armor and then overloading in a series of particle explosions.

The rest seek out Staren's Starhawk and Erika's Z'Gok, less in number but no less deadly as they swarm through the seas to try and imbed and inject particles into anything vital -- limbs, thrusters, heads, anything.

And through the cloud of particles, the Trilobite THRUSTS forward -- aiming to /collide/ with Jack-O's buckler front grappling-arms first. "Crush this one first! If their reactor overloads, we can use it against the ship!"

And so, apparently, the pilots intend to do just that, all /six/ grappling arms swinging down to abruptly /jam/ themselves into the smaller Buckler -- to grip, squeeze, and start to crush whatever they can get their hands on.

Ugh, damn Newtypes and their CHEATING.

If Healing wasn't so annoyed by Erika managing to out-maneuver her torpedoes, she would probably acknowledge that her quick and witty response was a good one. However, the Cyber-Newtype A-LAWS pilot is far too prideful, arrogant and bitchy to do anything like that!

"Pft, nice TRY!" is her cry as the Z'Gok's torpedoes launch and whizz past, cutting through the waters as the GINN WASP slants and sharply cuts aside. "Let me show you how it's REALLY done, shitty mobile unit or not!

"EAT THIS!"

The WASP turns shortly after to face the Z'Gok before its torpedo salvos open once again, a massive amount of torpedoes launched right for the Z'Gok. All while Healing Care cackles shrilly at the other pilot.

Lasers??

One of the claws fumbles downwards to throw the Hygogg's laser sighting out of true even as Jung feels pressure resting on her head like if twin incarnations of Noriko decided to sit on pegs connecting directly to her sinuses. Sweat runs down her back. This sucks, she thinks. Why is the pressure here suddenly so intense?

Amano helpfully says, "It's a little hard to breathe down here, isn't it?"

Jung's eyes widen slightly. Maybe it is in fact literally just the huge weight of mars-water above them. She answers Oliver, a little slowly, "Yeah..."

Is her resolve wavering? Why not ask that sudden torpedo being shot right at those damaged lower portions from short range, even as the Trilobite starts to fold back up (without a lot of success, due to its damaged limb) into its fast-approach configuration.

The beam was a direct hit, and Camille lost visual sign of that WASP unit in a cloud of superheated water vapor that was indistinct from a mobile unit exploding. It wasn't on radar either, but that was meaningless with the minovsky particle density they were in now. "Did I get it..?" He squinted his eyes and strained, as if that would somehow help.

FLASH!!

He didn't! The prescient skills of a Newtype alone allow Camille to foresee the blast that would have incapacitated, if not largely obliterated the Zeta Gundam had it hit. He escapes the scop of the maser in a distance measured by bare increments, armor nonetheless superficially heating and expanding under that rapidly changing water temperature. The stresses on the Zeta remained withing its tolerance for now, but if it kept up..

He couldn't allow the WASP to get off more shots than that. End it now, end it quick, and try not to think about who was sitting in the unit. "You won't get in my head." Camille muttered, pressing forward as he dodged the maser beam and closing in with the WASP, "I WON'T BE TRICKED"!

Reaching behind it's back, twin beam sabers ignited as the Gundam stabbed straight down for the WASP's core block.

"None of your business!" Meriden isn't going to say where she's from, but the accent gives it away to someone used to Enders: Somewhere in the distant part of the Belt. Definitely not a local; it's faintly different than anything on Earth or Mars.

The Trilobite does not have regular water jets. It has GN thrusters, which are basically the same but sparklier. Elia doesn't let Otto in there easily; the grappling claws scrabble at him and try to keep him away, forcing him to drive the harpoon into a point /next/ to the thrusters rather than instantly disabling her movement.

The mental pressure intensifies as Meriden goes into overdrive, pushing the Trilobite almost faster than it's supposed to, whipping it around so fast that the back end fishtails, righting itself moments later. Meriden tenses. "Elia! I'm gonna do it!"

"Do wh - agh!"

Meriden's Trilobite abruptly accelerates at the Round Buckler. It pulls up instants before hitting Otto, running on sheer momentum as it starts to turn back around slightly. Meriden mashes every fire button on her console at once, the ports all over the body opening before releasing a veritable shower of sparking torpedoes, blasting everything around her - hopefully including Otto.

Tch, boxed in. Erika grits her teeth as torpedoes fly in from both directions and punches the Z'Gok to it's highest speed to outrun the double barrage. There's just too many of them though and several of the GN Torpedoes detonate into bright blatss of orange particles, bombarding the Z'Gok and rattling Erika within. The tough Z'Gok pulls through though as it weaves it's way through the rest of the explosions. "I'm sorry, but am I supposed to be intimidated by your PMSing?" The Z'Gok banks sharply and dives through the sea towards the WASP, it's one claw pulled back and superheated as it thrusts forward to spear the GINN. Then provided Erika hits, she pulls the trigger and pours hot beamy death into the open wound.

As the lead Trilobite charges at the relatively much smaller unit piloted by 'Racetrack' there is no 'but' in his decision to reveal the Armored Core Elite Pilot 101 and evade the massive claws who'd have probably ripped to shreads any other kind of planet. The gravity of mars helps to equalize the sluggishness of underwater maneuevering, and just as the first claw comes in, the Cordless Buckler smashes it aside, boosting /forwards/ evading the other claws.

"Geez, I don't like this guy. Too intense." The pilot quickly overrides several proximity alarms, before his eyes set on one flashing red alarm that gives him a great idea.

"TOO CLOSE TO DEPLOY DEPTH CHARGES"

"Like hell it is!" The pilot nearly shouts out as he punches the console several times, and than resorts to literally /hacking/ the unit-- in the computer sense-- to override that one too.

And the pilot tries very hard to get a good grip on the hull of the Trilobite before deploying a single depth charge, despite the fact that turbulence caused by the Elizabeth Cannon might veer it off course.

But despite this, if the attack should somehow land, the mysterious pilot would use any kind of debris to ride a shockwave out of harm's way, or use the hull of the Trilobite to shield itself, even going as far as to account for potential torpedoes coming it's way as a retaliation to it's attempt.

"Captain, there are too many torpedos coming to avoid." "Too man-what? They got beneath us!? We'll never get out of the way in time! ALL HANDS BRACE FOR IMPACT!" The GN Torpedos slam into the hull of the Daybreaker, rocking it even more than anything else that has happened all battle. MAKI's calm is helpful now, at least. "Damage to hull is great; breach in sector seven. Sealing off flooded sector."

Elizabeth has remained standing by hanging onto the wheel. "...all right. If that's how they want to play...they should /never/ have gone beneath us. ALL HANDS! Brace yourselves. We're about to try something /stupid/." When Elizabeth says that, it's clear she should be obeyed. Everyone aboard hangs on tight or hides in a box if they lack hands (see also: cat).

The Daybreak starts to rise...and aims itself /upward/. Elizabeth grits her teeth as the sub builds up speed, and then closes her eyes. The ship breaks surface, flying up out of the water. It crosses the sun...and then comes straight down, bladed edge aimed for the Trilobite. The water slows it as it hits...but not enough. It's a very hydrodynamic sub. It races downwards, aimed directly for the Trilobite, as Elizabeth laughs madly.

Highashibara Update: She's still whimpering in fetal position. Paptimus and Camille are definitely helping.

"Yes! We got this, Duat - Amenthes." The bluehaired framerunner really is starting to get overconfident in his abilities, it seems. Having hit his opponent once again, the metal of his opponent reeling underneath the force of the burst attack.

Guiding his unit, he believes it is time to finish it off! "Come on Duat!" The unit chases straight, one arm shifting back to its standard mode, whilst the left arm turns into a weapon as the package of high explosives is being chucked into the air. Believing it to be a standard explosive, the machine simply /chops/ through the item.

Big mistake.

Duat suddenly tosses up a huge 'warning' sign, and as the machine rumbles, and the entire cockpit blacks out to screen against the light. The intense heat and pressure begins to melt into the armor of the unit, the wings spray, and a series of them literally 'explode' - pushing the unit again, further into the unit.

Finally, a second shockwave ends up pushing the shattered armor Amenthes straight into the water a good half a mile further away, where it ends up starting to sink into the depths of Mars' ocean.

Torpedo! Oliver's Hygogg darts a sharp left, and the torpedo whizzes past, hitting...well, something else behind him. It might be small, but it certainly zips around quickly for such an old Zeon thing. "Nothing personal, ma'am," he insists over the radio, with no touch of irony or cockiness. He really does mean /nothing personal/ about the fact that they're in some kind of war struggle.

"Still," he whispers to himself off of radio, "if I can't make a reasonable dent in this big machine, all the dodging in the world won't matter. We'll be stuck in a stalemate." Sure, he didn't have the best luck with the missiles the last time, but maybe he'll be able to hit it this time around. Once again the fat guy in a little Hygogg fires off missiles from the hands of the aquatic mech.

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT... What the /fuck/ was that?"

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Come on Amenthes, MOVE!"

'Well,' Healing ponders. 'At least SOMETHING hit it.'

But that thought only agitates the Cyber-Newtype, causing her gloved hands to clench that much harder around her controls. Leaning forward in her seat, the green-haired girl(?) just seethes silently and grits her teeth. Damn this old-ass Zeon machine!

"Ha ha aren't you so cute for a human!" Healing barks in response to Erika as the Z'Gok closes in on the GINN WASP. "Am I supposed to be intimidated by some outdated piece of shit!? Couldn't you afford to bring something more /useful/ to this fight?!"

The Z'Gok closes in rapidly and digs its claws in- -briefly. Moments after the Z'Gok's heated claws sink in does the WASP respond by punching it in the 'face' before kicking it in the stomach to push it away. The attack is hardly damaging; the intent is simply to get her away before she can really screw up the GINN WASP.

"RAAAAAAGH!!" is all Healing cries as she hoists the GINN's hand-held cannon up and tries to fire it off, point blank, in Erika's machine's face. Yes, a cannon. To the /face/.

"I was just curious!" he snaps back at Meri.

Otto is, ultimately, a child of the elite on the Orbital Ring. He has no idea what an Ender accent sounds like. Meriden may be the first one that he has ever spoken to. The young man grimaces, as his blow doesn't strike dead on. He sees the burst of light and grimaces, recoiling backward, as he pulls away. His eyes turn, and his console screams warnings at him.

It flashes red with numerous lock-on warnings. He sees the torpedoes and streams of light underwater, and he sucks a breath in. This might be it, he thinks.

The Buckler dives forward, winding its way through the missiles. A couple of the smaller ones strike true, blasting holes in the armor. A ballast tank ruptures, air blowing out of it in huge bubbles that rush at the surface. The machine drops down suddenly. "God's wounds," he spits. "This is bad. Maintaining my current depth will be hard..."

He lacks the control and time to do another precision assault. Otto's eyes narrow -- and he sends the machine hurtling forward. The Buckler rams right at the much larger underwater mech, hurling its body into it with ferocious speed.

Within the GINN WASP, Paptimus Scirocco does the sensible thing when he sees the Zeta come barreling forward underwater and ignite twin beam sabers; he flicks the switch that should ignite the ZAFT mobile suit's own weaponry.

Except, nothing happens.

"Are you kidding me?" an exasperated Man from Jupiter demands to know, for indeed, the underwater GINN has no beam saber whatsoever; it doesn't even have one normally! The twin blades sink down, melting away armor, penetrating integral systems. Water starts to sloush about the Boots from Jupiter before the automated welfare system seals off the minor leak.

Floating away to the rhythm of underwater explosions, the GINN has definitely seen better days. Once more, it appears to have been vanquished; the same trick all over again!

And then, appearing like a gorilla from the mist, the GINN comes in for one last, reckless assault on the Zeta. That torpedo launching bazooka tube comes up one last time, and the entire clip is emptied, one ordnance payload after the next whirling through the water for the Gundam!

The misssiles stream in, not much time, Gai stretches forward one of the Z'gok's arms, the claws snapping open to clear the way for the partical gun. He opens up, trying to return fire and shoot down the missiles at the same time. Light lances through the water between them, likely because Gai's screen was yet still just a field of static. He could only react to the tension he felt in his heart, that thrill of a attack being leveled against him. The field of wild fire does nothing however, just left, or just right of it's target. A collison warning was Gai's only warning before impact. The missile detonated, blooming outwards in a explosion that filled the water with obscuring haze of bubbles and inky smoke.

Maybe that should have been good enough to kill the boisterous man, the ruined tatters of the Z'gok becoming his coffin, the martian sea his grave... God has a way of protecting fools however.

From the bottom of the cloud erupted what remained of the Z'gok. A arm ended in a jagged stump, the sacrifice of the limb seeming to have absorbed the majority of the explosion but it's work could be seen all over the machine, so much of it savaged... but yet it carried on.

"The people I fight along side might not all be heros, some of them may even be evil! But as long as I can pilot a giant robot, I can show them the way of a hero, as long as I am a pilot I can show the world the way of Gekigangar!" he announced as the battered machine veered towards her, another head-long charge. "With my spirit I can show them the way, with my soul I can shine a light so that they might see! This is my life's mission, to show all those with hearts frozen by hatred, anger and sorrow the path of love, friendship and justice!" he railed at her.

"AND EVERYONE KNOWS THAT SHOUTING OUT YOUR ATTACK NAMES IS THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IN A FIGHT BETWEEN GIANT ROBOTS!"

"GEKIGAN HAMMER!"

Erika finds herself looking down the barrel of a rather big gun. Now being a sensiable lass, she decides that this is not a good place to be and throws her hydrojets into reserve. The end result being that the Z'Gok 'squats' right under the beam as it opens fire. "I dunno, this seems more than enough to deal with you." Then Erika smirks as fate looks kindly upon her. Up above, she can see the Trilobite getting smashed from above by the Ship of Aurora, and it just so happens that Healing is directly between her and that ship. A perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. water gushes out of the hydrojet engines as the Z'Gok hurtles itself bodily at the WASP, aiming to ram it with a shoulder check. Either way though, she just keeps going as she runs down the floundering Trilobite and (hopefully) slams Healing into it's hull. Then she thrusts her claw forward to impale the Trilobite and unload into it's side, impaling /THROUGH/ Healing if she needs to in order to do it.

Missiles impact along the flanks of the half-compressed Trilobite as it starts turning around. Here Oliver may well have the advantage of many a mobile suit - he's a vertically aligned pillar of defensive force while the Trilobite is big, fat, and horizontal.

He may see a blue-haired woman turning her head and giving him a dirty look in the cockpit bubble; then again perhaps not.

"I'm firing the fat ones," Jung says as something opens along the Trilobite's rear flanks.

"Are you sure that's wise? Something that potent could cause us difficulties as well."

"OH MY GOD, AMANO," Jung says, "that last part wasn't a question!"

Kazumi covers her lips with her fingers to chuckle, even as Jung lets out a frustrated noise and hits a plunger. Two larger weapons, these still glowing an ominous orange, drop out from the back of the Trilobite, and hilariously turn around to go away from Oliver.

Except...

... that they have circular-running mechanisms and terminally homing software packages in them. The two large weapons, spread out by several dozen degrees of arc, turn around, speeding up steadily and converging now on the Hygogg!

Meriden Almace apparently finds a couple torpedoes she didn't launch in the first wave, and fires them too.

Not that it matters; they fail to lock on the fast-moving Round Buckler and blast somewhere in the distance. The Trilobite is more drifting than thrusting now; it's damaged, more than Meriden is trying to let on.

Otto slamming into it rocks it back. Warnings sound in the cockpit; the already paranoid Elia panics, while Meriden merely gets more determined. Her jaw sets. It probably looks more adorable than menacing.

All the torpedo tubes are still cycling, so there's nothing Meriden can do about them. "Elia!" she demands. "Grapple! Grapple now! He's right /there/!" Can't the other Newtype feel him? She can! She knows where he is, feels him drifting toward the claws...

The crippled Trilobite still has enough control to snap out with the four rear claws. If they hit, they whip forward, going to where one of the front claws can also snag the Round Buckler, and crush limbs. Meriden refuses to rip the unit in half. That might kill the pilot, and she won't do that - but she can pick the arms off so it can't shoot her.

"Give up!" Meriden yells into the radio, while Elia works the arms. "Come on, I don't want to /hurt/ you, you just can't steal from them!!"

Grinding her teeth as Erika mouths off, Healing rapidly finds herself in a fouler mood than usual. How dare some HUMAN talk to her like that?! How dare she be out-maneuvering her in such a crappy unit, no less! This is an OUTRAGE.

"Hrhmph!" is Healing's gracious reply as the Z'Gok throws itself at the WASP. To prevent this as best as she fires a torpedo off and maneuvers the WASP aside, the shot meant to throw her off her course, if anything.

"What kind of bullshit is that!?" the Cyber-Newtype barks, eyes flickering all sorts of wacky prismatic colors as she rages on. "I am SO SICK of dealing with such INFERIOR technology! This unit, your unit! They're all shit!!"

Healing's gloved hand reaches out and SLAMS the control panel. The salvos open once more, spitting out a wide barrage of torpedoes underwater, /right at Erika/. "UGH! Die already!"

Astrid jerks her hands back, bringing the Hygogg's arms up defensively, "God you love to hear your own voice..! You're pissin' me off..!" She wheels one arm back, bracing the other, warming up the mega particle cannon as she prepares to intercept another charge in what she feels is better preparation this time. But the Z'gok does something completely different this time. With a squawk, Astrid tries to wrench away, but her delay tactic works against her. The blow smashes right through the Hygogg's upraised arm, crashing into the top of the body and crushing the entire circle of track that the eye travels on. Inside, the top of the cockpit lurches downward, and Astrid ducks to avoid smashing her head on the ceiling. As the cockpit deforms, the chest door practically explodes open. The inward rush of water washes the red-headed pilot out into the martian sea, and she's thankful in that brief moment that the deck captain had made her put a dive suit on. Looking down, past her feet, she sees her battered mobile suit for the first time, seconds before its explosion polarizes her visor against the flash and sends the woman sprawling again.

The central command area is likely heavily guarded and very far from here. Luckily, a ship the size of a city requires numerous sub control areas to operate with any degree of efficiency.

Quattro's stolen transport careens through the pathways, the AEUG ace intent on completing his impropmtu mission before the fighting is fully decided. He's been out of radio contact for some time now, and he only has his intuition to gauge the pace of the battle. The vehicle screeches to a stop outside of a tower set into a recessed portion of the ship's surface. With most of the relief guard elsewhere, manning guns and the like, Quattro is free to rev up the engine and drive straight through the barricade.

He shoots the lock in, kicking the blast door and taking a quick stock of the interior before rushing up the stairs. As he begins to turn the corner, Quattro instead elects to remove his helmet, taking a flashbang from his drypack and dropping inside. He peeks it around the corner. A barrage of lasers scar the wall past him. Before anyone on the other side can realize their mistake, the red suited ace tosses his helmet inside, the screeching noise deafening him as well but leaving him free to rush in, gunning down two uniformed men with rifles and another one who makes a leap for one of the dropped weapons.

Quattro stalks further into the control area, nudging with his boot one of the bodies that might have just twitched. He locks the door behind him, taking up residence at a computer terminal.

The Buckler bounces backward, the armor on the front dented and crumpled slightly. Bubbles come out where the armor buckles. Otto's eyes narrow, as he sees the claws coming at him, and careful water jet firings sending it darting backward from the blows.

"I apologize," the Austrian says, "but I won't do that! I have an obligation here!"

Bright's words over the radio echo in his mind -- pay attention to how it moves, and see where a weak point might be. He squints -- and then he sends his machine hurtling forward, as it drifts. He rakes across one side, close to its body. The harpoon arm stabs outward, at two of those arms reaching at him.

Otto tries to impale the arms with it -- and then burst away, ripping them off afterward.

"Okay, that time I definitely got it." Camille felt totally confident. Things didn't generally get more dead than stabbing two beam swords into them!

His brain is apparently all out of newtype flashes for today, because the the bevy of torpedoes catches the Newtype completely by surprise. "The hell!!!" Cursing his damnable luck, the ace just barely manages to get the Zeta's shield up in time to deflect damage to the most critically sealed area's of the suit as explosions rock him around the cockpit in a bout of motion sickness that would've defeated a fatter man.

"Fool me once, shame on you..." There's a trickle of blood down Camille's mouth as he takes up the control sticks once again, beeping and booping in all the right places.

Two mounted wrist launcher slide open on the Zeta Gundam, and it responds in kind.

Oliver's a little puzzled as 'the fat ones' whizz right by his Hygogg, certain that the machine must have malfunctioned. Except...

Then they strike right into the back of the Hygogg, quite unexpectedly, sending it careening downwards into the water with significant damage and mild alarms going off in his cockpit. Oliver is used to mech combat, and the impact doesn't really hurt his heavily-padded body, but the shock stuns him for just a moment.

"How could I have let my guard down like that?! That isn't like me," he scolds himself as he rights the Zeon mech. A lesser man might be suffering from seasickness at this point, but he's just embarassed to have made such a mistake in such an early mission. He takes a deep breath, facing down the Trilobite, and tries something a little more ostentatious than he'd ordinarily try. Something he can imagine /Captain Harry/ doing with ease.

He fires the machine cannons, missiles, torpedo and beam cannons, activating each in turn, all at once.

It looks kind of silly, BUT...

The Hygogg's explosion rocks through the battered Z'gok, the machine bucking Gai in his seat. Having switched to the view camera mounted into the top of the unit's head, he watched the pilot as she was blown free. He never doubted she would escape. That's just how these things are. She had too much spirit to be just a walk-on characterm and he didn't know her well enough for her death to teach him a lesson... Still... he had not taught her the way of Gekigangar. He would have to redouble his efforts.

Pulling around, Gai pushed his unit back to the ship, she was too badly beaten to try and push on. It had seved him well, but still it was no Gekigangar.

This time, the torpedoes have no depts to hide in -- Staren sees the ports open, sees them launch. "Oh no you don't! not again!" Railgun slugs and missiles are dispatched, blowing up the torpedoes before they can come close! And maybe even damaging the Trilobite in the explosions!

Keeping a hold on the now-empty bazooka, the GINN WASP does the sensible thing when it sees grenade launchers start lobbing grenades into water; it begins swimming the other way, doing its best impression of a mobile suit with flippers. The underwater explosion rocks the already weakened infrastructure. The lighting within goes past mood lighting and into warning red, although not a drop of sweat beads the forehead of the Man from Jupiter.

Were this a sitcom, the camera would then pan down to reveal he's already inflated his underwater life jacket, the type that will ensure he lives to see another day should the suit erupt around him.

As the GINN loses one of its legs to the shockwave, the pilot brings the battered, broken mobile suit about for what may well be its last hurrah. Throwing the bazooka launcher at the Zeta Gundam, the WASP begins floating backwards and away.

Meriden Almace's Trilobite is crippled. It's not moving all that much anymore at all, so Otto's analysis is easier than it might otherwise be.

Elia lets out another one of those startled yelps Meriden is growing to hate as two of the Trilobite's arms are removed; for all the mobile armour's size, the arms are very thin and spindly in comparison. "Meri!" she squeals. "We're gonna lose! Pull back!"

"No way!" Meriden looks, if anything, even more determined. "Just do what I tell you to if you're too afraid to make up your mind by yourself!"

The battered, nearly broken Trilobite moves again - in reverse. Meriden has basically one shot and she knows it - so she aims just so, very slowly and deliberately, much more carefully than she usually does.

At the last instant before she shoots, Meriden jerks the controls a hair to the left, guided by intuition and Newtype instinct more than actual training. "I've got you now...!"

"We scored a direct hit on the Daybreaker!" confirms the back pilot of the lead Trilobite once his ears are done ringing. "Alright," breathes the front pilot. "All we need is one more good hit...!"

But -- it would seem their /planned/ 'final blow' is being a little less than agreeable. Claw smacked aside, the grasp of its metal prongs goes empty as Jack-O's Buckler jerks back. The front pilot lets out a small, incomprehensible curse, clenching on the controls of the large mobile armor. The Trilobite reaches out again--

--only to be intercepted by that lone depth charge. An explosion RIPPLES across the right front sub-arm of the Trilobite, metal tearing off from the force as it is yanked violently backward. Using that momentum, the agile and surprisingly nimble mobile armor fires off a single GN torpedo -- to collide with the Buckler and detonate with the heavy diffusion of particles.

"Heh, forget that thing," remarks the lead pilot. He cracks his knuckles, and leans forward with a grin. "With a hit like that last one, that sub can't have that much more keeping it afloat. Let's just take it out with one last good hit." "... Wait, where is the sub?" "... What?"

SPLASH

"What the HELL--"

CRACK

The force of a full-sized sub ramming into a large mobile armor sends the resounding metallic sound of a shockwave RIPPLING throughout the underwater battlefield. All of this force and fury registers only as a mild disturbance in the already turbulent waves of the ocean above, but the damage beneath is clear; the back section of the Trilobite completely crushed, the maneuverability tail has been rippled from the back of the machine -- and with it, one of its three GN-T drives.

"Wh-what -- who is captaining that thing?! A--are they suicidal?!" shouts the back pilot, in a voice of both confusion and just a bit of intimidation.

"I-it doesn't matter! We've got 'em in our sights now! Aim a shot for the engines--"

And that is when the Z'Gok returns, JAMMING a heat claw into the side of the Trilobite. Almost like a frenzied animal, the mobile armor reacts instantly, swinging a single grappling claw wildly to its right to SMACK the smaller Z'Gok aside with the hellacious shred of its metal external armor.

"Tch! Fire the main torpedos to get these Martian freaks off our backs! And then -- aim for the Ship of Aurora's engines!"

Damaged though it is, the Trilobite is still moving -- jetting /upwards/ through water like a massive underwater beast. Torpedos fire -- and several are shot down /before/ they can even leave the tubes completely; some still jet out through the force and heat, one of which aims for the Starhawk, but the impact is clear. The explosion ROCKS the mobile armor towards its side as the lead pilot shouts a, "WHAT THE F-- SHOOT THAT THING DOWN!" and three /large/ torpedos /shoot/ from the depths of the Trilobite, through the haze of superheated water -- one aimed for the Starhawk, to collide with that railgun and simply sink the entire mech with the force of its GN particle overload. The second is set for Jack-O's Buckler -- aimed to imped itself into the stomach of the machine and then simply blow it clean in half.

And the last? Fires very specifically, very precisely (you could say) -- right for the turbines of back of the Daybreaker, to aim right for the sub's thrusters.

The empty bazooka launcher flies towards the Zeta Gundam with impeccable aim, no less deadly an projects for traveling at the speed of...er..being thrown!

The Zeta Gundam casually dodges to the side as Camille remembers the shoulder buttons are used for strafing.

"...." Did that seriously just happen? Camille was a bit confused. Was the Man From Jupiter, if it was indeed him, playing some other sort of clever trick?

Camille wasn't about to let whoever it was have their way! And wouldn't have, if he hadn't glimpsed the Hyaku Shiki's hide-a-hole by pure chance as he gave chase to the retreating WASP. Camille looks to the diminishing visage of the WASP unit, then to the motionless Hyaku Shiki. Back and fort, back and forth.

DECISION POINT (YOU MAY WANT TO SAVE YOUR GAME FIRST)

A. End the threat of Paptimus Scirocco once and for all. B. See what Captain Quattro is doing.

Moments later, Camille emerged into the city-ship, sopping wet as he removed his helmet, his other hand clutching a pistol close to his side. Wasting no time, he ran in a random direction that also happened to be the right one, guided by the unseen yet omniscient hand of convenient narrative.

"I can't lose h--" Otto says, as he moves his machine backward, to get more space to maneuver. However, this time, there is a problem. The shattered ballasts cause his machine to drop down further. The reduced mobility proves his undoing.

This time, the torpedo rams into the head of the Buckler. The explosion viciously rocks the machine. The head is blasted off and the top part of the chest is torn open, sending a huge gout of smoke and air bubbles upward. The Buckler shudders, and then the water jets deactivate, causing it to sink further down.

Otto lets out a terrified, panicked shout as the cockpit goes dark. The main monitor shows a dim reflection of him, and he slams his fists against the console to no avail. Then, he notices the water starting to drip down from the top of the cokcpit. He swallows hard.

"God's wounds," he swears.

He grabs the ejection lever tightly and drags it down. The cockpit block fires out, shooting upward. It rises up to the surface and bobs on the waves. The remains of the shattered Buckler begin to sink downward, below.

Shooting at the enemy is never silly. The cavalcade of weaponry does fall, with emphatic, carbon-cracking, bubble-stream producing effect on the side of the Trilobite. One of the arms dangles loose as it starts to make towards the surface, lurching and clearly wounded.

OR IS IT?

(it is)

"God damn I hate ocean warfare," Jung bitches, Kazumi having nothing to say as she monitors the damage control board. She turns her head out of reflex, feeling the location of that Hygogg as she wheels around again, this time to make for the original ship - or at least where they started from. As the Trilobite makes a turn, using its own half-wrecked limbs as drag sources, all of its tubes flood. The machine lurches slightly.

Then the autoloaders just start dumping every single torpedo in the 'clips' outwards, streams of the GN-powered torpedoes arcing down towards that dreaded Zeonic machine. A-LAWS may lose, but by god they lose with spite!

TL;DR

After a few bouts of futile fire exchange, Healing's frustrations mount and, in a fit of androgynous rage, slams the eject button and self-detonates the WASP, possibly in close range of the Z'Gok!! The ejection tube shoots out of the water, followed by the ignition of thrusters as the escape pod snaps free and soars into the skies.

Inside, Healing just frowns deeply and folds her arms angrily. "I hate those damn things."

The mysterious pilot of the surprisingly agile Cordless Buckler has managed to evade all torpedoes up until now, when the lead Trilobite managed to get one torpedo to explode right next to the Cordless Buckler, dislodging a armored plate, the subsequent explosion of the Depth Charge sends the Buckler spinning away from the massive unit, the spin eventually turning into a corckscrew that ends abruptly with a pressure wave sent off to it's side, stopping it's spin.

At that moment, the mystery pilot 'Racetracks' notices the larger than large GN Torpedo heading for him. But there was something else there. No, not in the water. In this pilot's head. It was like a deja vu, as if he had seen this all before.

His hand quickly tugs on the controls and the machine spirals to the left and forwards, allowing the impending explosion to carry it sideways, out of arm's reach.

The Cordless Buckler then rips off a piece of it's armored plating and tries to beat the Trilobite with it.

"Headquarters, do you copy?" Speaks the Mysterious Pilot, trying to reach Brian and/or Elizabeth. "Please advise, I do not think that I can harm the enemy machine with this piece of-- machinery... Do you copy?"

Well, Oliver thinks for a moment, one good overkill deserves another.

This is right before the Hygogg meets with a missile storm that is frankly too big to dodge, briefly leaving the water around it black, cloudy and flickering with explosions. When the noises clear the machine isn't quite dead, but there are alarms alerting its pilot that anymore damage will result in the cockpit turning into a fishtank.

"...Well, what else can I do?" Using what energy remains, Oliver activates the thrusters to bring the battered Hygogg back to the surface and towards the submarine.

"This is Oliver Evlien," he alerts Captain Elizabeth. "Forced to retreat or risk sinking. Returning to dock..."

Let it be known that when Paptimus Scirocco reveals himself to be Shadow Mirror Bian Zoldark and kills the world, it will be on Camille Bidan's head. "Hmph, I wonder where he's off to," the Man from Jupiter wonders to himself, as the GINN WASP fires off its 'i'm retrreating ahhh' message and does just that, returning to the A-LAWS motherboat.

"We hit! Excell-what the?!" The torpedo goes unnoticed until the last minute, thanks to the turbulence confusing the sonar. "MAKI! Can we evade?" "No. Brace for impact, Captain?" The torpedo is amazingly well-aimed - /extremely/ so, really. It slams into the submarine's turbines, near the rear. The submarine shakes, and Elizabeth almost falls to the floor. "Nngh...MAKI! Damage report!"

"Sectors four through seven have been sealed. Turbines operating at sixty percent efficiency. Repairs will be required." "...nnnngh. Fine. Do we have power for a full ram?" "No, Captain - the turbines can't take it." Elizabeth grits her teeth. "Fine We'll do this. Just give me a moment-" "Comms." "...rrrrgh. Ester! Take it!" 'Racetrack's' query is taken by a pale girl who appears to be no older than sixteen. Her tone is serious and thoughtful. "Go for another target - they need the help out there. Leave this one to us."

Elizabeth points at Clara, who has looked up. "CLARA! Are the amplifiers ready?" "They just recovered, Captain!" "Good. We're doing this. Well, Noa, we don't have that many guns - but we'll aim for that core, sure." Elizabeth takes up her microphone. "All speakers aim for where he's showed us."

And then Elizabeth takes a deep breath. "All right...this is it." She closes her eyes...and then shouts. The amplifiers are blown out from the strain - but they definitely do their job. The sheer sonic force aimed at the Trilobite is immense. "ELIZABETH...CAAAAAANNOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"

"We won?"

Meriden just turns around and gives Elia a high-five. /Whether she wants one or not/.

The battered Trilobite hesitates as Meriden gives awkward directions; she scans low, trying to figure out if her target ejected. Satisfied that he did, she turns, heading back toward a docking station.

There's that screaming again in the distance that makes the Trilobite tremble. Weird, Meriden thinks.

One by one, areas of the city-ship begin to desynch from the firing patterns. Crewmen and women abandon their posts to fight misreported hull breaches. The electrical grid shuts off briefly and switches to backup generators until a reroute solution can be found.

Quattro sips a juice box that he stored next to his grenades.

"Wait, where the hell am I?"

Camille Bidan looked to his left, then his right. Then everything went dark and when it came back on he was in a concrete jungle of a cityscape that was full of way too many running, panicky people for this liking. He stowed the sidearm down his pants, like a real gangsta, and slipped down an alleyway.

"Shit, I can't believe I got lost!" The misplaced pilot huffed and puffed as he tried to backtrack, resolving never to get out of a mobile suit again, "Captain Quattrooooo!!!!"

Staren is starting to get the hang of this! He's a bit slower on the draw this time, but shoots the torpedoes before they can curve around to hit him. "Hey, this isn't so bad once you get used to it! It's almost like swimming! And now..." The Star Hawk kneels on the surface of the trilobite, and pounds its fists against the hull -- the contact trigger electromagnetically-propelled spikes, sort of like EM revolver stakes, to drive into the hull... And then, through their hollow points, Staren begins pumping as much of the suit's plasma reserve as he can -- it's not like he'll be using it for beam sabers today!

"They're all still operational!" "D-dammit -- don't they know when to stay down?! We're -- we're getting outgunned here--"

"Shut up! Just focus on the ship! If we take out the commander, then the rest of them--"

The pilots' heated argument abruptly ends the second the Buckler collides with the Trilobite, armor-piece first. The improvised weapon CLANGS against the surface of the armor over and over as the thing's mono-sensor swivels behind its thick visor to almost peer at the Buckler. Armor dents in, but little else.

"What the hell? Get that thing offa us!"

And, a second later, those grappling claws come bearing down, thick metal digits SLAMMING into the Round Buckler to batter it with six massive limbs all sweeping about in frenzied, almost frantic movements, to do no less than knock the thing /straight/ off it.

"C'mon -- c'mon!! Let's just ram that stupid ship! We can board it and then--!"

The thrusters of the Trilobite ignite. It launches forward at full speed. "And then--!" And then --

--The Starhawk latches onto the surface of the Trilobite, and /shunts/ plasma straight into the armor. Metal bubbles, almost seems to boil -- and then EXPLODES into superheated chunks of molten e-carbon that quickly cool underneath the waves, blasting away a massive chunk of the Trilobite with such force that it is /knocked/ to the side of its original path for the ship's turbines.

"Dammit-- dammit!! Keep going! We can-- we can--!!"

'ELIZABETH...'

"Oh, no. OH NO--"

'CAAAAAANNOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!'

The shouts and protests of two panicked pilots are snuffed out within the overwhelming sonic rampage of the Elizabeth Cannon; Staren would do well to get off beforehand, as the second that sonic wave impacts-- --the Trilobite's front is just BLASTED apart, the resultant explosion CONSUMING the cockpit. And the Trilobite is literally shouted at to death. And yet, like some phantasmic ghost, the remnants -- propelled by inertia -- will RAM into the underbelly of the Ship of Aurora, fizzle...

... and then EXPLODE, in one cacophonous, if not muddled, BOOM.