2011-06-03 - Sudden PLANT Assault

A FEW DAYS AGO

A few days ago, the Oldsmobile Zeon base of Copernicus was reinforced by mysterious machines. They swept in from a strange ship, remained silent through the entire fight, and yet were clearly and firmly on the side of the Divine Crusaders, led by their strange white-and-gold leader with the bizarre beam flag in hand.

FIVE MINUTES AGO

PLANT's Early Warning systems were disabled by hostile gunfire; brief reports flashing across EFA and A-LAWS channels show shots of the unusual purple ship from Mars (http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100707081602/gundam/images/5/5e/Zamouth_Garr.png) before its gunfire disables their cameras, presumably destroying the stations along the way.

RIGHT THE HELL NOW

The Zamouth Garr flagship of the Crossbone Vanguard has arrived outside Side 4. Around it swarm the Den'an Zon (http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100519102317/gundam/images/3/3d/XM-01_Den%27an_Zon.png) mobile suits of the Crossbone Vanguard, their weapons at the ready as they await one last statement before beginning their attack. They are expertly trained; they are professionals, no mere space pirates looking to raid a colony for the sake of resources. The pilots of the Den'an Zons are *soldiers.*

The Zamouth Garr's launch bays fold downwards, a single white-and-gold Den'an Zon with a massive beam flag staff taking its stand. Within that Den'an Zon is the leader of Crossbone Vanguard himself, the superhuman cyber-newtype Iron Mask. The cyber-newtype fingers curl about the controls of the Den'an Zon Kai as he listens to his subordinates give him the go-ahead.

"Begin the attack. Minimize civilian casualties," Iron Mask declares, flipping his radio down as the ship's catapult sends him streaking into space.

As one, the mysterious Crossbone Vanguard advances, beam flags blazing to life. At the head of the charge, the white-and-gold Den'an Zon Kai; from the Zamouth Garr itself, a single message:

CIVILIANS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY MILITARY TARGETS ONLY

blares through the colony's radio.

Who the @#$! are these guys?

TEN MINUTES AGO

After a decent visit to the Argama, Quatre has returned to the A-LAWS. He'd asked for shoreleave in order to support Heero after his loss of the Wing Zero. But he couldn't stay long. These visits had to be short, because if he stayed away too long, they'd started asking questions. So now, known once again as 'Vier Winnaar', Quatre Raberba Winner is moving to the red Gundanium armored Mercurius within the hangar of the PLANT. They had enough information of how the Vayaete and Mercurius worked together, but had nowhere enough information on the workings of these machines on their own. And the last time they'd tried to get sufficient information, they'd been interupted whilst deployed in Austria as some guy had come to 'reclaim his heritage'.

A rising wire leads the blonde in OZ uniform straight up into the cabin of the machine, and settles into the seat. The hatch closes before him as he flips a series of switches, and the machine begins its startup-sequence. "This is Vier Winnaar, beginning startup sequence." - "Roger that, private Winnaar."

However...

FIVE MINUTES AGO "One moment, private Winnaar!" Just as the planetary defenders power up and spread around - the unit walking onto a training area with a series of Taurus units aiming their weapons at him, a message comes through, and the training systems halt. "We're getting a message through. It appears that this colony is under attack. Turning off safeties. Just remember private, no beam weapons!" That's right. The A-LAWS command recently had released that order. No beam weapons within colonies. After the damage that had been done to the Neo-America colony by a certain Orbital Frame's weapon being tapped aside, fear of beamweapons inside colonies had been rekindled. "Roger that command. I will launch and fend off the invaders."

NOW As the call comes through - Vier is... pleasantly surprised in a way. He lands the Mercurius in a residential area and lets the Planetary Defenders deploy over the nearby houses, whilst the civilians indeed begin to evacuate. The red machine uses its hand, and the young man uses the speakers, in order to help the humans find their way to the nearest evacuation shelters.

 James Heller transmits, "Huh?"

 James Heller transmits, "Hey someone's hitting the PLANTS"

 James Heller transmits, "Unknown mobile suits. They match with the ones on Mars."

 Ascian Luddite transmits, "Amenthes is still being repaired, and I'm quite busy in the Earth Cradle with things."

The couch within the Gekko is overrun with a shaggy, immovable moss. For the past couple of weeks, it's been allowed to grow, others keeping their distance, awaiting the next one to deal with the mess.

Until Talho comes and kicks him right off it. "I've given you your time but how about doing something about our funds!?" Holland's eyes raise up to Talho, past one of the features he admires most about her, to one of the other. "The... what?"

The couch is nearly capsized. "EXACTLY!" Holland, having tried to just run away from it all by doing nothing, knows fear once more. Instilled on him as he shoulder hits the shag carpet. Armed combat would be less dangerous.

It's amazing how money just finds it's way to Holland though. "Really? Taking one of their colonies over? yeah, they're not going to like that one bit." The surfer guru muses, "You've got yourself a deal."

Tearing ass around the Den'An Zon, the Terminus Type R909 twists around the main gun of the Garr shortly after, scouting some of those weapons he'll be on the side of. Holland doesn't particularly like working with the Crusaders.

He'll take it over the other side any day.

"Ready whenever they are. Everything's looking good." The Terminus leaves a streak and lazy black trail from the rockets on the board its on, propelling itself along.

YESTERDAY

"And in other news, the Side 5 Frontier IV colony has cut itself off from radio contact and Federation offcials have been removed from the colony..."

Bruno J. Global frowns at the TV screen and picks up his phone, pressing the hotline to his ship's bridge. "Commander. Set course for Side 4, maxium cruise velocity." It's a calculated risk, but theres little choice. He hungs up the phone and leans back on the couch. "Hmn... more trouble is coming den..."

RIGHT NOW

The Zamouth Garr advances towards the PLANTS of side 4. The Wreckage of the hourglass shaped colonies destroyed in the opening attacks of the Balmarian invasion posing as exceelent cover for the ship and mobile suits of the Crossbone Vanguard, but that cover works both ways.

Massive engines fire and twin slate grey towers crest over the edge of one of the colony plates. Another piece of detrius surely...

Only wreckage doesn't move in sync, nor does it /accelerate/ like it has engines.

Higher it rises. The great ship SDF-1 Macross reveales itself to be the source of the movement, the twin booms of it's reflex cannon standing high over it 's 'head' as VF-1 Super valkyries launch off it's left arm and the bays in central body.

"This is Captain Global to invading forces. Recall your mobile suits and retreat. This is your only chance to parlay." He hangs up the ship phone. "Launch all Mobile Suit and fighter squadrons that are ready. Keep us between them and the inhabited colonies."

Just a test flight.

That is the explination she had given to the Argama's hangar crew when Lin launched earlier that day. Of course, getting a bit of freedom from the Katharon battleship and the chance to get the hang of piloting her Orbital Frame without the prying eyes of higher ranked Katharon officials is also part of the reason. Being allowed to pilot the machine at all had come as a surprise, but that didn't mean that the 'gift' was entirely altrustic. No, they wanted flight data on Orbital Frames as much as any who normally fought against them, and Lin isn't /quite/ ready to hand that over just yet. So, she'd arranged this excursion with one of the few people she trusted: Macua Huitl.

<<"You are improving.">> The AI comments without any real hint of praise. In fact, the feminine voice sounds more like a recording at a train terminal than anything else. The blue Orbital Frame comes to a hault as the thrusters ease off, hovering briefly in space. "Fire Dancer, this is Mistwalker. I think I think one more pass should do it and then we can head home. I've just about got the maneuvering do--" There is a crackling sound from Mayet's systems as it picks up on a distress call from the nearby colony. "Volume down, Amit." <<"My apologies.">> Wincing as the volume gets brought to a more acceptable level, Lin flexes her fingers over the control orbs even as the Orbital Frame seems to respond more to her mood than to any action. The pulses of metatron begin to beat faster, as if it were some ever living heart slowly speeding up. "Should we check it out?" Obviously, she's deferring the decision to the more experienced pilot, although the Katharon units might just be visible already on the scanners of the attacking ships.

A twinkle arrives from the depths of space, just outside the perimeter of the PLANTs. A fast-moving unit with mobile suit-like cross sections on radar systems, with a familiar yet dated profile on most intelligentsia systems.

It is a sleek white Gundam-styled mobile suit, beautiful and large wings expanding around it as its micro-verniers dictate every minute detail of its movement in a manner rivalling most AMBAC systems, with the thoughts of its pilot gently translated towards fluid movement.

It carries with it a large beam cannon of high calibre, armed in its hand and opening fire with warning shots on the Den'an Zons of the Zamouth Garr flagships, as much a warning as it is a statement of, 'I won't let you do as you please.'

It is the Wing Zero Cus-- wait that's still in the +request queue GRRRRRRRRRR

No, it's that OTHER mobile suit with giant angel wings that isn't that other unit, in the same way you might be able to say 'Huckebeins aren't Gundams' with a straight face (protip: you can't). Or, say, 'Ice, Ice Baby didn't rip off Under Pressure'. Don't do that ICly.

"Yue Rohay. Ophanim, assisting in defense efforts," the pilot broadcasts over shared channels. She shuts her eyes and feels the constant thrum of her hands pulsating against her machine's systems... it's been so long.

But it's all led up to this moment. She has to keep fighting, with or without the people who made her the way she is now.

 Suriel Misaki transmits, "Don't worry, we'll do some killing in your name."

 Ascian Luddite tssks.

TWO HOURS AGO

"Damnit, that Villetta." Ryusei taps his foot, waiting for his turn in front of the counter at the PLANT's largest Neo Plant-Mart. In his arms, a basket full of "top-choice #1 Lavazza Ultra Black coffee" boxes. Like, to the brim.

Waiting isn't something Ryusei's especially good at. "Why the heck did she have to send me up all the way HERE to grab coffee. Sounds like she's really trying to get rid of me... grumble, grumble."

"Sir, please put the merchandise on the counter."

"Whaddaya- oh. Uh, sure. Sorry." He mumbles, handing the basket to the lady and with the other hand pulling a piece of paper out of his breast pocket for the next item he's supposed to get on this absurd errand of his.

"Go pick up a parcel at Hangar Bay 4 of the spaceport. Pff, sure, why not. I'm practically SRX Project's errand boy now."

"Sir, it's 85 and 92 cents."

ONE HOUR AGO

"THIS is the parcel Villetta wanted me to get?" Ryusei's mouth is agape in disbelief and excitement as he behlods what has been hidden by SRX Project in this remote hangar bay until now, for the very last controls and fine-tuning in a safe, controlled and out-of-the-way-of-DC-spies place.

R-Blade. The mass-production model of the R-1.

He has all the papers ready. Villetta thought about everything. He just needs to hop aboard and fly away.

First, however, there's a 552-page technical manual.

"...I WANT TO GET INSIDE IT SO BAD."

Which goes straight into the closest recycle bin with a loud clattering noise.

You can't say Ryusei doesn't care about the environment!

50 MINUTES AGO

"HOW THE HECK DO YOU FLY THIS THIIIIIIIIIIIIING"

30 MINUTES AGO

"Hey, it's not so hard after all! It's a bit like the Makeras Z-19k they introduced in the 34.22 patch of Burning PT!"

10 MINUTES AGO

Ryusei sighs with excitement and relief. The wild mechanical beast broken under his care, like a fine horse (a metaphor an acquaitance of his would certainly approve), he sets flight for Earth, laughing and sheering and making engine noises to himself.

"Oh, yeah, right! I need that, that!" He suddenly realizes, ad he lets go of the controls to search his pockets. The R-Blade goes a bit into a spin, but only for a moment or two.

Ryusei Date jams the mini-disc in the CD player,, pulls the throttle back a bit, and relaxes as the OST of Space Conqueror Grantryer betins to play.

NOW

"And we'll call with one voice: Heaven-rending Fist!" "And we'll call with steel heart: Explosive Laser Kick!" "Because we believe! Because we know! That you are here! "Gran! Try! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!" "CIVILIANS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY" "MILITARY TARGETS ONLY"

Ryusei lifts an eyebrow. "Wait, what?"

NOT LONG BEFORE:

Sitting alone in the pilot's locker room always felt embarassing. Being the 'Weird Girl from the Institute' was doubly so. Ice ran in her veins as her latest batch of medication soothed her mind, calming her down, and bringing the clouded emotions around her into sharp relief.

Nervousness. Excitement. Fear... All of the above... The sensation was already beginning to fade, however, and it wouldn't be long before the weight of those souls became just background noise once again. Probably for the best, she thought, as she soaked her mask in the sink, and wiped it dry. Pulling the black band across her face, and snapping the three straps together at the back, the pilot glanced at her reflection

Another day... Another battle.

Pulling on her suit's helmet, she seals it in place, and activates the visor's polarization.

NOW

Launching off the deck, a red A-LAWS Jinx, just like the dozens of others around it, kicks off the catapult into open space. However, with a blast of brightly glowing orange particles, the suit quickly overtakes its brothers, and charges for the colony, and the invasion force. Joining with the spearhead of robots, the pilot grips the controls, and takes a deep breath.

Eight Murasame grits her teeth in concentration. Just one victory. Just /one/... And she might not be considered a failure a further time...

 219954 Yue Rohay transmits, "Good to know I'm not alone today. Yue Rohay, Ophanim."

 Vier Winnaar transmits, "Vier Winnaar, reporting for the defense of the PLANT colony."

 Alina Luddite transmits, "This is Lin, of the Argama. Do you need assistance?"

There are days when it feels to the Valstork Family like they just can't do a simple delivery without winding up in the middle of somebody else's fight. It helps (sort of) that they're on reasonably good terms with the PLANTs, to the extent that an independent merchantman affiliated with the Trailers is on 'good' or 'bad' terms with anyone else's government.

In this case, though, it's a simple decision. Kazuma and Mihiro quickly climb into the Valhawk and take off, with the Valstork holding back to help provide a modicum of cover fire for the PLANTs in case it's necessary. The Macross's arrival is a welcome sight; for that matter, so's everyone else who isn't joining the DC-aligned forces on their way in.

On the other hand, sitting around and being impressed isn't going to make the Crusaders leave. Kazuma opens the Valhawk's throttle more or less all the way, and heads straight for the DC forces. "Mihiro, who looks like a good target for us?" he asks, almost as nonchalantly as if they were out shopping for a Father's Day gift for Blessfielld.

"We'd probably better work on those mobile suits," Mihiro suggests. "If we just go for the ship, they'll swarm us."

"No kidding," Kazuma answers, and cuts the Valhawk into an abrupt corkscrew, stitching Laser Vulcan fire across the nearest enemy mobile suit's armor ...

A LONG LONG TIME AGO I CAN STILL REMEMBER HOW THAT MUSIC USED TO MAKE ME SMILE

Aki Saitani, official A-LAWS Unlucky Test Pilot (#3), is patrolling space, hard at work, ever-vigilant against the assorted menaces of the universe! Oh wait, no she isn't, she's having a nap. Ship on autopilot and cruising through the wilds of space, the exceedingly dull landscape has meant she's conked out. So now she sits head buried on her arm, leaning forward on her consoles and muttering gently to herself as her everpresent mp3 player fills the cockpit with whale noises, the gentle kwoks of penguins, and the assorted Sounds of the Ocean ($9.99 on iTunes).

The awakening is rude in more ways than one; for a start, it's that one brusque A-LAWS despatcher with the aviator sunglasses suddenly barking orders into her ear - and /when/ exactly did he get the ability to patch into her audio systems? - and for two it's urgent and direct, a neverending and angry stream of words drilling into her brain as she tries to wake up. Muzzily, she stares at the video link for several seconds, letting a full revolution of the information pass as she slowly processes it.

Opening her mouth wide in a huge yawn, Aki suddenly guns the Brynhildr's engines hard, a loud building whine of power and her own cheery salute cutting off the diatribe. "I'm on it, sir, meetin' up with 'em now!"

AND I KNEW IF I HAD MY CHANCE THAT I COULD MAKE THOSE PEOPLE DANCE NOW THIS IS STUCK IN YOUR HEAD

"What the-- /hell/'s that thing-- those things?!" Aki has to correct herself midway through the first thing she says over short-range radio as the Brynhildr rockets within sight of the colony, bright blue and gaudy and keeping pace easily with the assorted other A-LAWS. Inside her cockpit, still wiping away the drool from the corner of her mouth, Aki kind of gapes at her monitor. "Y-... Yer got enough firepower there?"

She allows herself a shake of her head, and then a couple of slaps on the cheek; this really /ain't/ the time to gawp uselessly, kiddo, get to it. Places to be, innocent people to save, really big things to blow the hell up. She thumbs her radio on as she races forward into the fight, armed with nothing more than a hyperpowerful spear, a modicum of terrified apprehension, and a whole lot of suicidal bullheadedness.

 K Mis Yue Rohay transmits, "I have no intel on that ship. Running scans. How about you guys?"

A Test flight worked, the Amazon CI still needed more data, after all being for the next Gundam fight it needed to be turned as well as possible. Though if command had paid attention her attuide was odd for a fighter she'd been fallinginto the growing sentiemtn that a number of fighters from the last fight had. The Gundam fight needs to no longer chose the govenment. Still more test flights were good after all. The Mobile trace gundam follows after the frame and thanks to the new harness that holds her in place. She's not going to go bouning about in space.

"Someone's hitting the planets"

She pauses at the announcment. That was shocking in this day and age, however she also is aware of the long vanished Yue showing up.

"We'll do what we can to aid the defence and slip away after. Also I'm pretty sure bright's going to want to know who these new guys are."

 Yue Rohay transmits, "Nice to see some familiar faces too, Macua."

 Alina Luddite transmits, "No one I recognise, but that's not surprising."

 Alina Luddite seems to be talking away from the microphone, "Can we get a scan, Amit?" <<"Scan sytems are inoperable. I apologise.">>

NOT AT ALL A LONG TIME AGO SOME MIGHT SAY A LITTLE WHILE AGO FOURTH-GENERATION SPACE BATTLESHIP EXELION

"Why the /hell/ were you MIA for almost two weeks? I don't buy into that report of yours! You're hiding something from us!"

The visage of a man whose double-handlebar moustache and mirrored aviator sunglasses fills the Altairlion's communications window, the silvery space-jet sitting in the hangar of humanity's favourite giant blue Star Destroyer, refuelling hoses still being unscrewed from it. We assume, anyway, that Tesla Drives run on actual fuel and not teenage hopes and dreams, but you /never know/.

"You have a /duty/, Douglas!" roars the hardass, jabbing the camera with his finger. It shakes for posterity. "Others might buy into your hero shtick, but I'm onto you! You're just a fucking loose cannon, you hear me? A LOOSE CA--"

Ibis Douglas leans forward in her seat as one of the technicians on-deck gives her a thumbs-up through the window and clears out of the way for launch. Her helmet is in her lap, and she is eating a space-hamburger and drinking some kind of fluorescent pink energy drink. She squints at the screen, and her copilot, one Tsugumi Takakura of Project Terrestrial Dream, buries her face in her hands in the seat behind her. What became of her /sweet little girl/?

"Launching in defense of side 4. Give me the lecture later." she snarks, and jams the radio to the off button.

The brunette in the backseat puts both hands together, looking nervous. "Ibis, we're nowhere /near/ side 4. They're not going to buy that for a second."

A pause.

Ibis looks over one shoulder. "I think you're forgetting how fast you designed this thing to go."

RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW THE STAGE OF HISTORY

The silver, sleek form of the Altairlion in cruise configuration arrives on the scene in a flash of light. Hell, for comedy's sake, you should assume it takes about as long to get here as it did to go from the end of that flashback to the end of this sentence.

Tsugumi Takakura resists the urge to be violently ill in the back seat as Ibis throws the machine into a tight turn at speeds best left described as 'relativistic', beelining to link up with any friendly IFF blips.

SPACE JETS.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!" Comes the scream of Katina Tarask, who launches in her Gespesnt Mk. IV, and bursting out towards the DC peoples, and says, "COME ON, DC BASTARDS!! I'LL TAKE YOU ALL ON!!"

The Red Gespenst pulls out it's CP rifile, and charges up a shot, and grins as she points it towards Iron Mask, "EAT THIS!!" And fires off a shot!

 Macua Huitl transmits, "IT's been a while Yuy."

 Duo Maxwell transmits, "Y'know, now that you mention it, she does seem kinda familiar..."

 Yue Rohay transmits, "Hello again, Duo. It's been a long time. Familiar?"

SOME TIME AGO

"Simply put, the don't know /what/ they want," the floating image of a proud man with a face of iron and a voice of wrought steel declares.

"And you would show them," Vindel Mauser curiously states. Settling into the great, heavy seat of his personal Earth Cradle command womb, the Lord of War touches a finger thoughtfully to his lip as he studies the hologram before himself; occasionally, he glances towards one of the dozens of monitors that comprise the borders of this chamber to keep an eye on the many, many conflicts and skirmishes playing out upon them.

"Mmm." The holographic aristocrat clasps his hands behind himself. "Given an opposing viewpoint...? I believe shall."

The corners of Vindel's lips curl.

"Done."

NOW

Without the aid of a dedicated command ship, the Divine Crusaders' Shadow Mirror unit has to work a little harder to make its way from conflict to conflict--particularly those in space.

Fortunately, the Shadow Mirrors have decades of experience in appearing wherever they must to bring war to whomever is most in need of it and in turn, some of the unit's ambush tactics have been passed on to its allies; thus, while the Zamouth Garr is the only non-Federation battleship active in the immediate area, several /more/ mechanized weapons are entering the fray from another angle entirely.

At their fore, the spined, midnight blue and black titan known as EG-XX Zweizergain races for the PLANT colony, right arm already extended with murderous intent. In stark contrast to the Crossbone Vanguard, there's no burst of radio communication, no warning at all save for the Zweizergain and its contingent's forward blitz.

"I would suggest," he coolly transmits between slow, bracing breaths, "finding its oxygen stores and detonating them; we needn't spend /too/ long lingering here."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "Unknown known command carrier class ship? Okay these guys are even more organize than their operation on Mars Hinted at."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "Sorry to send you guys in blind like this. See if you can get some more scan data would ya?"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Vindel Mauser transmits, "For the moment, give the unidentified ship a wide bearth; its crew's goal here /appears/ to be tangentially aligned with ours."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "Hey! We got some Metatron over here not in a unit WE control."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "Gona go chaaaange that."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "The hell?"

And among the machines that field for the Divine Crusade, one of them looks suspiciously like the very same R-Blade that Ryusei Date is flying today-- in fact, it's production code is even 'RPT-014.' Rubber-stamped as /not/ being the R-Blade, however, the gray, red, and even darker gray Personal Trooper blazes through space with little effort on the part of the engines and the Tesla Drive.

W18-- Lethe Rusina-- is somewhat out of her element inside of this machine, but she manages just fine. It isn't the handling or the weapons that is unfamiliar to her, but the total lack of clutter inside of the cockpit. No extra monitors, no fleet of consoles, no need to literally hack the functions of her own machine and it's remote weapons on the fly. There /is/ one benefit to this situation, though:

She won't have to split her attention seven ways at once.

Holding formation with the Zweizergain, Lethe reaches ahead to the touch-screen displays of her console and prepares her weapons. Her voice is soft and calm, even if confident. "Understood, Colonel."

Behind and just to the right of the Zweizergain, the Qareen flies at less than max speed. It's purpose is to provide back up, and also make V-man look more like a badass by flying in formation. Maybe less on that last one, but Suriel was jumping at the chance to get a chance to ride with the leader of the Shadow Mirrors. He listens to the orders, yeah, igniting them would make this battle quicker. Probably murderous, but hey, he's the boss, and Suriel cares very little for individual lives.

The weak fall to the strong, it's the way to things.

However, Suriel is caught off guard by the signal of Metatron.

"Huh. Metatron, and I am the only OF in the area...interesting. Sir. I am going to investigate and recover. The last thing we need is other people having our edge." He says, with a salute, before the unit disengages from Formation, and hits full speed towards the Mayet.

Suriel doesn't hide his approach, but the pure speed of the Qareen might be frightening. Before she knew it, the unit would be right there...hovering around her.

"Interesting! Not one of ours all right. Alright you, whoever you are! surrender, and come back to the ship, or don't surrender and I'll drag you! CHOOSE THE FUN OPTION! PLEASE!" Suriel laughs. "Or not, I'll have my way with this place if you comply." Nevermind the bad aura that he is giving off, after all, he is directly connected with the Metatron.

"Choose! Or I'll assume you made the /wrong/ choice."

Another blip suddenly appears on-screen, causing a tight frown on Yue's face. She feels jolts of electricity running through her bedamned hands as past memories start to kick up. "That unit..."

She narrows her eyes. No mistake, it's that same unit from back in one of the Shadow Mirrors' earlier excursions. If THAT MAN is allied with this mysterious new force invading the PLANTs, then one could only tell what turn this war of Earth and Space is going to take...

It's time to test the new waters out.

The Ophanim dips in on a flighty curve and locks its rifle in place. Several quick golden beams lance outwards, trying to find its mark against the Shadow Mirror cluster, but she knows that in the end her target is the EG-XX Zweizergain.

"Vindel Mauser... so you've been moving behind the curtains, have you? What could your intentions be now?" Yue questions as she banks a hard turn after her shots are finished and fired.

Ryusei runs his eyes on the in-cockpit tactical display, until he stops on a particular unit, glowing red and marked as a "confirmed bogey" with a DC IFF code.

A R-Blade. WAIT WHAT

"IT'S A-"

Wait.

Waaait.

Tightbeam communication open.

"HOW THE HECK DO YOU EVEN HAVE AN R-BLADE!"

Great going, Ryusei. The enemy must learn to fear you.

The back-mounted reactors of the R-Blade open up and explode with white-blue fire as the experimental unit is accelerated forward at ludicrous speed.

"YOU GOT SOME 'SPLAININ TO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The square-mouthed cannon the R-Blade is armed with is immediately brought to bear, tracing an arc of yellow energy with every movement...

"RECTANGULAR LAUNCHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER"

...Before its energy projectile is loosed on the R-Eins.

Transmission was sent off as a federation colony was under attack. One of those who responded to this attack was a Trailer; more correctly one of the Raven's Nest founders and now 'collared worker' of Crest Ind. The White NEXT known as 'Strayed' flew through space with simple ease, making his way for the destination point of where the combat took place.

The Dropship that gave him a ride was in the distance, away from any harm, but close enough that Nell Aulter, his operator (thus a second pair of eyes) could keep radio taps with him. "Remember R, if you get to close to the colony, you'll need to turn off the Primal Armor. So try not to get to close in."

<<"Understood.">> The pilot responded from deep within the white machine. Those Aqua green thrusters blasted brightly as they moved the NEXT into over-boost and soon the machine would be upon his targets. <<"Send a signal to the federation forces that we are on their side. Lets make the DC know just who they are playing with.">>

"You got it..." Nell replies, though there was a hesitation in her voice, but she at last asked, ".. though..what about the new guy on the board?"

<<"What of him? It isn't like he needs to know I'm out here. Besides, this is on /my time/ not his. Cutting to radio silence on my end.">>

"Understood." Nell said calmly. Her fingers quickly going over the console of the terminal where she sat. "R.. I just did a quick radar scan. We have a Trailer who may have aligned with the Divine Crusaders. We also have several Divine Crusader units in the area. I'll send you a quick map print of their locations." The blond woman then inhaled deeply, "Good hunting?"

The NEXT moved in closer to the battlefield, the assault rifle hunting for its target in the darkness of space. The only sad thing was, for those of the ability to sense pilots; to sense those emotions, or even pick up on thought patterns...

...There was none coming from the Strayed as it opened fire on its target.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "Sounds like ya Born in Space is at it again."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki provides a convient image from his gun cameras.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina speaking over Ryusei's screaming. "Engaged with two targets. I will do what I can."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> James Heller transmits, "Sounds like Ryusei."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite suddenly starts swearing up a emotional storm.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Yue Rohay transmits, "Vindel Mauser... the Shadow Mirrors are here too."

So much for easing into the whole piloting thing. "I'm going to need your help, Amit." The young framerunner murmurs in a steady voice, her blue eyes already focusing on the view screen before her. After an earlier fight with the AI, she'd managed to get it to allow her at least some access to certain controls. However, piloting an Orbital Frame in any manual sense is difficult even for an experienced runner, and Lin - well, Lin doesn't /remember/ being an experienced framerunner. So, she's learning the only way space seems willing to teach - by shoving you face first into it.

<<"Understood.">> Lin's fingers smooth over the glowing controls even as the flow of metatron brings out a reaction in her skin. Like her own blood, the blue marks on her arms seem to radiate that same eerie color that lights the cockpit. "Prime offensive and defensive systems." <<"Affirmative. Targeting computer initialized. Weapon systems arming.">> A whine of energy hums in the air as the Orbital Frame's hands are replaced - or morphed into two pistols, the fingers forming into the handle and barrel, glowing blue lights circling each glowing gunpoint. "How did you...?" Lin blinks in surprise, looking left, then right as she tries to make sense of what she'd just seen. As much as some things had come back to her naturally, it seems that some parts of being a framerunner are still... a wonder.

She doesn't have time to ponder that transformation for long, though, as the Qareen seems to appear next to her within a split second. They weren't kidding when they said these metatron machines were fast. Her fingers clench across the controls, and something seems to fall into place in her mind. One more puzzle piece, one more connection, one more bit of herself reclaimed. // "You want the fun option? All right then, because I'll never surrender to you." // The voice that gets transmitted is... well, nothing like Lin's own. It comes off sounding warped and robotic, perhaps Mayet interfering with the transmission.

"My god, is that me?" This part isn't transmitted, thankfully, and is shared only with Mayet. <<"Yes. We are altering your vocal pattern to make it more... intimidating.">> There is one final roll of the eyes from Lin as she nods once, not about to argue the need for such things with her AI at the moment. Instead, she turns the two pistol-hands of the Orbital frame towards the Qareen, her hands flexing as she fine tunes the targeting system. "Amit, Fire! Let's show him he chose the wrong girl to mess with."

Global's entreaties are completely ignored; the Zamouth Garr continues to broadcast its message loudly across the frequencies. CIVILIANS PLEASE EVACUATE; MILITARY TARGETS ONLY. With expert precision, led by their flag-equipped squad leaders, the Den'an Zon squads move for their targets to secure the entry points of the colony.

The interlopers were expected, Iron Mask reminds himself. This was a show of the power of the Crossbone Vanguard; the great beam flag he wields in his hand flies bright in the starlit sky, green energy in the shape of the crest of the mysterious reinforcements. They are heedless of warnings; they do not reply over the radio. They do not speak to the Divine Crusaders allies, they do not speak to their foes; cold, quiet, and efficient, the groups break off into squads led by mobile suits with flags.

And they are well-trained. Kazuma's blasts smash across one of the units, blasting through the arm of the Den'an Zon Kai and melting through its shoulder. Immediately, the mobile suits move to close around it, their beamshields rising in phalanx position to close off the injured unit; Katina's shot deflects off the beamshields, smashing against them harmlessly and ricocheting off into space.

In his own unit, Iron Mask is defended by no squads. He is their leader; he is their master, their superior, and he needs no support. With a single wave of his flag, the Den'an Zons turn to face their foes - the Macross, the Altairlion, the Brynhildr, the Valhawk, the Gespenst. With a second wave of his flag, the lines and lines of machines open fire, their wrist-mounted twin-beam guns lighting up the sky.

The battle is joined in earnest.

Unfortunately for Lethe, the formation doesn't last long.

Fortunately, she has enough time to catch sight of R and the Strayed from the corner of her eye, the purple-haired gynoid tilting her head just enough to see what's coming at her. Twisting to one side, moving with a burst of acceleration from shoulder-mounted thrusters, the Personal Trooper makes a deft and sudden evade to keep from being caught up in the machine gun fire.

Snapping up the twin G-Revolvers, solid physical projectiles crack out in the silence of space at the R-Blade-- but in the midst of her evasion, in the midst of her return-fire, Lethe catches the beam launcher's blast across the middle, ripping a deep, charred-black gash in the armor while sending the machine spinning out to one side.

"I am under no obligation to explain anything to you," she replies to Ryusei.

The revolvers stowed, the R-Eins reaches over either shoulder and pulls out a freaking Magna Rifle in either hand-- and then levels one on the R-Blade, one on the Strayed. Keeping an eye on both targets, she waits for the reticles to lock on and flicker red before she pulls both triggers-- and sends a heavy blast straight on at both of them!

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "OOooo! She's firing on me. Sounds like a cutie too."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Kill the bitch."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "How DARE they steal Mayet!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Don't you dare blow it up - Suriel. You got that?"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Disable it, fine, but don't blow it up. I WANT that machine."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "I can't promise you anything."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "Also, I don't take orders from you. So, I'll do what I goddamn want."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Don't make me pull rank on you, Suriel. That's my sister's unit. The bastards killed my sister, and now they're using her unit. I want it back."

This is when it would've payed off to read that 550+ pages long technical manual, Ryusei.

The R-Blade (THE ONE AND ONLY) still spins and barrel-rolls through the R-Eins' interception revolver fire without a scratch...

"...Wow. You really handle like a beauty." Ryusei's face betrays all symptoms of a robotlovestruck teenager as he caresses the instrument panel.

...And then a twin beam rifle shot *GLANCES* against its right shoulder plate, shaking it in a loud explosion.

"HHNNNNNG! Damn it! TWO beam rifles? Well, I CAN DO DUAL WIELDING TOO! WATCH THIS!"

The experimental PT dives and soars, trying to maneuver around his opponent as two G-Revolvers are ejected from their holsters straight into the robot's nimble hands.

"...It's showtime!" Ryusei grins, and he twirls the two guns, old west style.

"TAKE THIS! ULTIMATE R-BLADE GUNSLINGER ARTS! HISSATSU! TWIN G-REVOLVER TWELVE-ROUND BARRAGE!"

One shot after another, in rapid succession, both six-shooters are completely unloaded into the R-Einst as the R-Blade basically circle-strafes it in 3D.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki rolling eyes, "Depends on what happens." oddly sympathetic suddenly, "But I'll do what I can."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Thank you, Suriel."

After the civilians have managed to get to safety, the planetary defenders disengage, only for Quatre to notice that the battle is already unfolding outside the colony. And there is a strange signal he is catching. Metatron. The sensors on the Mercurius may not be the best ones, but he knows that rhythmic pattern of unrecognized energy particles. And within moments he has turned the machine about - and rushes out into space through the nearby hangars and finds...

"Lin..." He recognizes the blue machine. Just recently, when still on the Argama, he and Staren had been talking to her whilst she was still trying to get used to that machine. There was no way she was going to be a match in a battle against another proper Orbital frame. "Shit, can't let her know it's me... but... here goes nothing."

The rifle of the Mobile Suit gets taken out, and Quatre unloads a quick volley of thick yellow beams between the Mayet and Qareen, trying to get the latter's attention. He doesn't speak through the radio. Instead, he quickly manuevers a set of the black disks - the Planetary Defenders - in the way of Alina's unit and continues to fire at the other Orbital Frame with the Divine Crusader IFF.

The Terminus R909 pulls around, twisting around back /after/ it notices something specifically.

"Shit," The monilithic size of the Macross as it makes its presence known is a pretty sizable advantage on the battle-field. "Eh... wasn't paying /that/ much." The LFO pilot remarks on a stray though to have the Gekko engage one of the prominent Federation battleships.

As much as he'd like to just send a new old prototype stolen from the very same owners of the Maccross, the 'Iron Mask' guy just didn't offer a battleship worth of cash. Not even half of it.

The Red Gespent would have a hard time grasping its gun for more reasons than just the eruption of beams. Shooting by the Red Gespent, the Terminus is missing a boomerang knife - but Katina will find it handily as it spins against the hand, digging into it before somehow tearing through space back to the LFO!

Spinning around, the board's twisted to face another direction, shooting off towards another target already. "Sure as hell going to be earning it today." The ascot is tied, carefully, around his neck.

An hour or two before, 'carefully' meant digging into his neck as Talho dragged him off the floor.

With its free hand, Katina's gespenst draws out its Roche saber, and just BARRELS towards Iron Mask's Den'an Zon Kai, getting easily struck by the beams. Katina's never been good at the whole Dodging process, so she just goes through, and manages to nick the enemy with her roche saber, before pivoting about and the arm setting a plasma stake.

"Hit me all you like, I'm gonna take you down hard!!" The Gespenst pivots about, as she screams out, "RAPID JET FIST!!!" And swings the Plasma staked fist at Iron Mask's machine.

The Strayed goes to move fast to the side as he notices the beam charge up. However as he attempts to quickly quick-burst to the side and straight down, the target was made and he just wasn't quick enough. However, as the blast came in and he realized he couldn't escape, he opened fire with his assault rifle.

The Energy from the beam slams into the primal armor. The wave of energy washes over the aqua sick green, nearly almost turning gold field. The sheer power pushes him back in space, before it rips apart the primal armor and slams into the center of the NEXT /hard/.

The Strayed flips in space, before it quickly corrects itself. <<"... I hate space..">> He rumbles softly. Then with a blast from the thrusters he charges in quickly right for Lethe.

The white armor scorched, but on the lower left armor a energy blade of some kind powers up, blasting out Kojima energy into a solid, or near solid object of energy; into a blade. The Kojima blade swings out as the NEXT gets in closer. Then with a spin of its body, the Strayed lowers down the blade onto Lethe.

Macua Huitl pauses as she sees an orbital frame inbound, it's one she pause she knows this one. It's the one that attacked the Argama some time ago. She enses a presence out there she's not felt since the Balmarian war. Was that? Yes it was Ryusei iot had to be. But there's the issue of the incomming orbital frame and he's falls in to back the other one up.. Suriel would find funnels breaking off the back of the amazon, powering up and flying after the orbital frame, she sees Yue's going after vindel? She should wait she mioght not be all right Vindel flat out a Gundam fighter if not in actuality at least in skill enough he can claim it and no one calls him on it. But for now the Orbital frame, the funnels start to fire, dancing around and trying to keep Suriel off balance.

"You want some odf this? Well come get some!"

<Radio> Tightbeam to Alina Luddite: Vier Winnaar comes through slightly distorted - he's clearly trying to lower his voice. "Katharon or not. I'm backing you up. Please help us save the lives of the people on this colony."

The telltale light show of beam and autocannon CIWS light up the background in criss-crossing stitches of glowing firepower that pulse and burst against the gentle backdrop of space, a dance the stars are surely sad at seeing repeated so often, and the Altairlion banks hard to the (relative) right, cruise engines powering down as power is rerouted to things like 'weapons' and 'sensors' and 'fully sick subwoofers'. The radar comes to life.

[ ] UNKNOWN [ ] UNKNOWN    [ ] UNKNOWN [ ] UNKNOWN

Ibis squints. What could this...?

"Ibis, break, /break/!"

Tsugumi Takakura earns her keep as the Altairlion's erstwhile copilot, shouting over the sound of constant beeping as enemy targeting computers sweep and scan the advanced Armoured Module, giving it a moment's early warning before they open fire. Barely a year ago, that would've been the end of the fight for Ibis Douglas, smashed on the end of Crusader beam-fire because she stopped to think for a moment. But this ain't a year ago, bitch, and it sure ain't a cutscene, either.

The Altairlion's manoeuvring jets fire in a sharp burst of green fire, and the twin-tesla drive output steadily rises as the pilot hurls the throttle forward and goes into a steep dive, leading two of the enemy XM-01 Den'an Zons on a ludicrously high-speed chase. We are talking mega-fast, here, like super zippy. It's not even fanwank to say they haven't got a hope in hell of keeping up. Tsugumi does her best not to freak out, fastening the flight harness around herself as her pilot-friend weaves and jukes inbetween brilliant beams of energy weapons fire.

A familiar voice burbles in Ibis' ear over the radio, and she grins to herself. A fire burns brightly in her eyes.

"I got you covered, Saitani! Here we GO!" she crows, and increases speed.

The Altairlion's wings and fins tuck inwards because they don't do a whole hell of a lot in space, and reduce the targettable area of the ship, and the nose-mounted Gravity Guidance cannons begin spinning up as the silver Armored Module charges headlong into the thickest concentration of DC units, and possibly /straight for Iron Mask himself/. There's a momentary pause as the approximate speed readout of the Altairlion corrects itself, displaying an ever-increasing number we won't reveal quite yet, and then a brilliant glowing hailstorm of explosive shells come a-flying from the space fighter.

But more than just spray machine-rail fire into the enemy forces like a jackass (which Ibis does /anyway/), the Altairlion goes careening wildly in a broad arc that soon sees it coming back around again towards two of the Den'an Zons at the kind of speed that precludes reaction. In the fastest transformation sequence ever, the Altairlion briefly snaps back into humanoid configuration for long enough to grab two of the DC units and slam their heads together, before twisting back into a sleek space-jet and jetting off as the explosion happens.

SPACE JET

"Yessssssss, ma'am! Aki Saitani, comin' through--!"

Suddenly, out of the sea of explosions and gunfire that suddenly make up local space and from where it's been in close formation with the screamingly fast Altairlion, streaks one shiny blue machine at top speed - directly for the enemy leader himself.

The Brynhildr's already plugged its spear into the mech's prodigious power source to power up the Gungnir, the machine giving it all its got to form a bright white glaive of energy, at least the size of the spear again and incandescent against the blackness of space; behind it, it leaves a bright white blur of ionized particles that clearly mark its sweeping path.

"Haahhhhh---!!" yells Aki Saitani, Possibly The Worst Decision-Maker Ever, as her machine swoops and races down the side of Iron Mask's, seeking to draw a long white-hot line in its armor. At the last, the spear bucks and ignites, a plasma explosion blooming suddenly against her opponent's side and giving her enough lateral momentum to blast away from her suicidally close-range attack.

Diving towards the head of the advancing column, the lead A-LAWS Jinx charges over the formation of Crossbone mobile suits, adding to the already thick Minovsky haze with its own luminescent GN particles. Gripping the controls, the Jinx's pilots flips and spins through the enemy fire, dodging and evading shots, until it passes over the head of the white and gold lead unit.

There. That *had* to be her target...

Braking her advance, Eight Murasame stares down at the leader, taking a moment to focus her senses towards... Whoever that might actually be.

With not so much a yell, as a muffled grunt, the GNXIII lowers its lance, and launches forwards, aiming to knock the Den'an Zon Kai away from its subordinates.

But just before it does, gathering up what reserves of will she has, Eight attempts to force her thoughts out. A single, faint mote, that might draw him away from the others...

OVER HERE!

Kazuma does his best to steer the Valhawk clear of the return fire, but a couple of shots manage to peg the Valhawk, rattling them and throwing off Kazuma's attempt to return fire.

For once, Mihiro doesn't chide her brother about letting his focus slip; mostly she's keeping an eye on the Valhawk's systems, ready to back Kazuma up and keep their machine in the fight as long as possible.

Once Kazuma's got the Valhawk flying steadily and under control again, he whips the Valhawk back around on another attack run, nearly flying sideways as he tries to strafe the Crossbone mobile suits, endeavoring to get some shots into them before they can bring their beam shields around ...

The Qareen finds itself suddenly surrounded.

"Huh. So you have friends huh? Can't fight on your own? Oh man, I am going to beat the SHIT out of you. Hell, I am not even going to kill you. Ascian is going to get that honor himself, because dying to a chicken shit like that is the WORST way to go... even for a coward!" he says, with a laugh.

The shots from the orbital frame fly around, as the Fast frame moves around his opponet. However, Funnels, come at him in unpredictable ways, followed by focused fire by another unit. The Metatron kicks in immedaitely, hearing the damage as he growls.

"Oh this is going to be FUN!" he says... Then suddenly. -Remote activating of GEIM system-

"What? Ah sh-.."

The Qareen stops suddenly, doubling over and mimicing the motions of the pilot. Then suddenly burns BRIGHT green, as the power of the system kicks on, flooding Suriels' brain with various chemicals...and linking himself to the unit directly. The green fire surrounding him becomes brighter...and the psychic footprint becomes less of a mild annoyance, and more like a wallowing of sorrowful souls.

"Well... time to die." he says, to nobody in particular, as Sword breakers spread out, each one aiming to shoot the enemies around him full of holes.

The R-Ein is performing amazingly well, considering the circumstances. The Strayed to one side, the R-Blade on the other-- and what comes in first is a massive spray of bullets, fired one after the other like Ryusei is some kind of wild west gunslinger out to mow her down in the street.

The Personal Trooper bucks to one side, sways to another, moving through the assault and toward the R-Blade in a very direct manner, aimed, and with intent. While the rifles are stowed, the right arm reaches across to the left hip, yanking out a stout mecha-sized knife-- and thrusts it forward for the shoulder as she aims to pass right by.

Something builds in the back of her voice-- it's hard to say what exactly it is. Lethe herself can't fully recognize it, but it it would be quantified as 'hostility' and 'aggression.' Behind the mask of near-perpetually worn sunglasses, her green eyes narrow. "Your tactics require revision!!"

Lethe twists the R-Ein around with a jerk of the controls, facing the Strayed as it comes charging in with it's own blade-- beam though it may be. Throwing everything straight back, the Personal Trooper isn't able to beat the NEXT's sheer speed, a deep slice crossing down the machine's chest.

"Heavy damage sustained; operational capacity at 48%."

Reaching behind it's back, now, the R-Ein plucks two more guns from hardpoints scattered all around it's body... but in this case, it's more in the form of /cannons/ rather than rifles. Without even bothering to target R, she decides to focus on the lesser of two evils-- Ryusei-- and fire off a pair of beams, twisting the Personal Trooper around to try to match his maneuvers and to try to keep him caught up in the blast!

Oh, and Katina manages to avoid the boomering knife throw, while missing Holland Novak at the same time with her own plasma stakes again, screaming, "Back off!!!"

If nothing else, Lin is lucky to have a few friends among those in Katharon. Even if she doesn't know that one of those coming to her aid is actually Quatre in disguise, it's enough that there are others out there she can depend on. It's almost enough to warm the heart - almost. <<"Enemy has evaded our attack.">> "I can see that." Lin's voice is no longer that of an easy-going girl trying to find her way. It's hardened somewhat, changed into something far more intense and almost a bit dark. "Sure talks a lot, doesn't he." <<"I can mute if needed.">> "No, it's fine."

//"Why don't you let your combat do the talking, rather than running your mouth."// Again, that eerie growling voice eminates from the Orbital Frame, making the pilot sound both male, and almost inhuman. Lin's cold blue eyes take in the sight of those Planetary Defenders offered out by the A-LAWs vessel, and as much as she might have her own hatred towards that particular faction, she isn't about to argue with a bit of help. Afterall, this was supposed to be a training exercise - not a full combat assault.

<<"Detecting power fluctuations from enemy unit.">> "Ignore it for now, Amit. Watch for his weapons sys--" One arm instinctively raises, caused perhaps by the intelligent AI, or by Lin being that instinctive in the use of her machine. The attack is all but blocked, leaving only a faint scorch mark on the Orbital Frame's armor. Unlike the quicker units of this kind, Mayet seems built for one ready to stand and fight.

//"We'll see who's a coward."// The voice of the pilot growls once more as Mayet's thrusters engage, keeping out of the way of Macua's funnels as she tries to get a better angel on the enemy. "Focus fire on the legs, let's see if we can't slow it down a bit." Sure, this is space, but most units still had their trust mechanisms in their legs. Lin just isn't all that familiar with the 'anatomy' of Orbital Frames, regardless of if her own had a bit of extra in certain places. <<"Weapons ready.">> Rolling her hands forward, Lin watches as the targeting system locks on to the Qareen, the red blip blinking as she taps one finger, causing another round of pistol shots to streak off into the space between herself and the enemy.

The pilots of the Macross are all veterans, survivors of the campaign informally reffered to as the Year of Hell, more officially known as the Long Journy Home. The pilots survived one year without support as the Macross traversed from Pluto back to Earth while being hounded by the then still hostile Zentradi. They might not be arrayed in as picture perfect a formation as the Crossbone vanguard, but each variance is something that has been battle tested and proved to be effective. It helps that Global encourages innovative tactics in his men.

When the Crossbone Vanguard opens fire, the VF-1Super forces don't need to be told to dodge. The Valkyiries are thrown into swooping rolls and dives as the majority of the fire reaches the Macross itself, th impact of the of fire from the massed mobile suits cna best be described as 'plink'.

The Macross' thick armor just shrugs aside the weapons from the smaller mobile suits as the ship cruises forwards. "Minimal damage reported sir." Misa Hayse reports.

"Focus fire on the center of the enemy formation. Force them apart." Global commands as he watches the tactical display. "Aye sir, begining missile saturation fire." Claudia LaSalle says in a clipped tone. Weapons emplacements across the Macross lock on to the Den'an Zons and fire salvos of missiles.

"Never," Vindel assures the Ophanim's pilot. Zweizergain banks to a hard stop to meet Ophanim's rifle blast--by--just kind of floating there in space, unmoving.

No, wait, scratch that, it does move: its arms cross imperiously over its chest just before the golden rays crash into it.

"Whom/ever/ you are, you appear to have gotten the wrong idea of me."

Zweizergain blurs at the edges a /split/ second before impact; when the beams /do/ strike, blurred edges become half a dozen shimmering, phantasmal duplicates of the machine as it shunts its mass into the space immediately around its body to blunt their effect somewhat.

"I /much/ prefer the light of day."

Zweizergain's body doesn't fold back into itself; instead, it utilizes its reduced mass to reduce the distance between itself and the Ophanim in the blink of an eye, giving the winged mobile suit the barest window of opportunity to save itself by stopping before it. If the mobile suit /doesn't/ evade, well--at /least/ the attack levelled upon it is nothing more than a simple punch.

A simple punch delivered with all the Zweizergain's recombined mass keenly focused into its knuckles.

Simultaneously, the Zweizergain races from its own body, hand outstretched menacingly towards the Strayed; by the time it's reached the Armored Core, the duplicate's shimmering form solidifies long enough to try taking hold of the Strayed head with designs on bodily dragging even further from the R-Eins.

"As for you," he transmits to its pilot - compressing its head all the while, if he's able to get and maintain a grip on the machine "that is /mine/. Your fight is with /me/, now."

Things just went from bad to worse, that is for sure. First it was 'just' an Orbital Frame - which was bad enough. Now he had to deal with it suddenly exuding... pain? Sorrow? The young man doesn't realize it, but the look on his face has suddenly turned into a frown, and he has an extremely bad feeling suddenly. Like something is terribly wrong about the pilot within that machine before him. He almost forgets to lower his voice, but manages to do so in the end as he turns on his speakers. <"Don't do it! I don't know what you're doing, but don't! It's wrong!"> He calls out. Nope, Quatre, totally not a NewType. The Heart of Space is simply telling him that what is occurring before him isn't natural!

The sword breakers rip forwards, but the analyzing eyes of Quatre quickly let him decide where he needs to move the Planetary defenders! In a pair of threes, six of them rush out before his unit and trap the weapons - fending them off... parrying them, if you may. They come back, redirecting! The discs disengage their energy fields and rush to the sides of the Mercurius, again, intercepting the weaponry. All the while, the young man inside if sweating profusely. It's hard to do all these calculations and guiding them. His fingers rush over a series of keys before him, so that they are guided by his mind, before grabbing the two joysticks of the machine again and pushing forwards, bashing the shield at one of the nearby swordbreakers as it comes through, and then letting even more energy into the verniers to make a pass past the enemy frame!

And just as Alina pushes past, firing her shots off at the Qareen, Quatre lets the Mercurius come up behind it and forms a shield directly before himself. The right arm then grabs down beneath the shield and reveals... A GIGANTIC beam sword! It purshes energy out like almost no other, and then skewers straight through the electro-shielding, which disables just for that moment needed as he attempts to rupture Suriel's machine's right arm off. Always with the non-vital attacks!

An amazing invention, radio is.

In the heat and chaos of battle, an invisible wave of electromagnetic energy crosses countless kilometers to deliver a specific message to a specific radio set to a very specific frequency.

The top-secret military frequency used by Project SRX members.

The radio of the experimental R-Blade PT model, the mass-production model of the R-1.

The message-

"RYUSEI WHERE THE FUCK IS MY COFFEE"

Yeah, SRX Project Commander Villetta Badam, straight from Earth.

"Commander Villetta! The PLANT is under attack - By the DC! I managed to-"

BEAMS INCOMING! the warning bleep of the R-Blade narrowly saves a distracted Ryusei. The R-Blade ducks and spins just below the dual beam, breaking formation and out of the engagement as fast as he can.

"...I managed to escape with the R-Blade more or less intact-"

"I DON'T CARE RYUSEI"

"B-but! The DC have an R-Blade, too!"

Screaming, angrish, a scuffle on the other side. Then, Robert H. Oomiya, Lead SRX Developer, and his calm and reassuring voice.

"...Ryusei... are you alright?"

"...Yeah. More or less. The R-Blade is amazing! It handles like-"

"I know. Listen. We don't have much time-"

"Yeah! The DC are about to-"

"It's not what I meant, Ryusei."

"Wha?"

"Villetta's been three days and counting without her coffee. We've tried giving her another brand, but it just made her angry."

"But... the DC..."

"Ryusei Date, for the sake of the continued survival of Project SRX, you MUST deliver that coffee here ASAP! And the R-Blade, too."

"..."

Without saying another word, The R-Blade accelerates further, sending a radio message informing all allies that it will "Continue his previous assignment". And leaves the battlefield.

If only they knew.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina calmly, "I apologize for inconveniencing you, Colonel."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Vindel Mauser transmits, "You were clearly outmatched; learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Lethe Rusina transmits, "Understood, sir."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite making a ruckus in the Earth Cradle's hangar, trying to get them to release the Amenthes to him - but it's mid AI-update.

The Strayed's aqua green visor watches as Lethe changes targets. That center light following her movements closely as she seems to be taking the fight against another target, ignoring him.

That was never a good idea.

"R!" Nell's voice rocked over his radio, "Behind you!"

The Strayed quickly spun around, the Kojima blade still activate as he attempts to swing at his new target, the Kojima blade does cut in, but the hand of the other machine slams against his NEXT's head, breaking through the Kojima Primal Armor field. R can be heard growling from outside as he attempts to fight back. However as the strange machine starts to try to crush the NEXT's head, a slightly gritted teeth of pain could be heard being emitted out, before the words of a soft hiss stretch out, <<"Let.. go.. you bastard..">>

The strayed quickly manages to break free from the grip, before it suddenly overboosts back. The Assault rifle coming down to aim. His vision blurred within for all weak points on the mech he faces, before he then takes a steady aim.

Then opens fire attempting to impact all the weak points within the armor itself.

"Ironic that you lead the Shadow Mirrors, then, isn't it?" Yue taunts with a stern face as she not so much evades through the real robot pilot's choice of tactics moreso than to just draw that lilac-lavender roche saber from the Ophanim's wing recharge rack to clash fist against sword.

The weapons radiate brightly as they contest each other for dominance, for a while, enough for her to exclaim, "Yue Rohay. And I will not sit by while you dig your claws deep into places you are not so much entitled to!"

She breaks away further with one retro-thruster burst from the wings, long enough for her to extend the mobile suit's torso forward to do a quarter-circle strafing run with the machine cannons, lead bullets spraying all over the area to catch the teleporting Zweizergain in its crossfire.

"Go back whence you came! We have enough trouble to deal with in our own yard!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "..this doesn't look good.."

The Den'an Zon Kai isn't so easy to get near, as Katina might find out. As soon as she starts moving towards it, the other Den'an Zons move to swarm, bounding her shots off the beam shield without trouble. Similarly, Kazuma's laser vulcans are bounced aside by another squad, their teamwork tightening up as soon as they notice him trying to strafe. The Altairlion's fire successfully distracts the incoming Den'an Zons, a squad breaking from its targets to go after her.

Leaving Aki and Eight free to go right towards Iron Mask's Den'an Zon Kai, plowing straight towards the Den'an Zon Kai's location. At the last minute, however...

//////////NEWTYPE FLASH/////////////

the Den'an Zon Kai just lances out of the way of both attacks, as though it had never been there; the lance passes through empty air, stabbing into nothing but space. It's Eight who lands the first shot against the Den'an Zon Kai itself, in the midsts of the mad chaos of the battlefield the Den'an Zons engaged with the Macross's forces; the Den'an Zon Kai turns its head to face her just as the shot comes in, the GN Lance sliding through its shoulder and leaving a sparking hole where once was a joint.

And this close, Eight can feel every Single Bit

Of the incredible mental pressure being exuded from the unit. The other Newtypes on the battlefield might get a taste of it; an overwhelming, eclipsing, encompassing mind, orderly and cool, more mechanical and controlled than wild and unrestrained - it is a disciplined pressure, a sense of Self and Purpose that drives...who? What? What kind of person has that kind of mental strength?

The anti-aircraft missile from the Macross is far more effective. It explodes in the midsts of some Den'an Zons, a burst of radio chatter - men screaming in shock - as it explodes and detonates their units. Two units are torn to pieces; three more are damaged, but still operational; a mere two undamaged at all. The damaged Den'an Zons are already beginning to withdraw to the Zamouth Garr for repairs, the undamaged ones of the formation tightening up into a back-to-back form. They're *definitely* well-trained.

Worse, their ship is no slouch, either. The Zamouth Garr's cannons rise as the squads split apart, charging with energy and targetting their foes. The main cannons are focused on the Macross - but the rest of the guns on its bow spread out, targetting foes engaged with their squads. Kazuma, Katina, and Ibis. Immense beam blasts lance outwards...and carefully avoid shooting anywhere near the actual colony!

Hmmm...

On a more personal level, Aki and Eight are right engaged with the enemy leader. The white-and-gold Den'an Zon Kai's beam saber flares to life, and with expert fencing abilities presses its advantage, the blade swinging left and right; it aims for Aki first, jabbing at her unit's shoulder, before it pirouettes to the side to cut at Eight's own machine.

Newtype...

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "..Kazuma, how close are you to R's position?"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Holland Novak transmits, "Yeah, not looking the best out there."

The knife rebounds off the swing from Katina's weapon and arm, throwing it off its course and repelling it. "Damn!!" Holland exclaims, not because of the weapon but because... "Part of the benefit was supposed to get away from this!" The burning /rage/ of a woman scorned.

So many hot headed women pilots!

The Terminus twists 90 degrees, away from the strike, towards another of the Alpha laws collective. Keeping his distance, this time. "Alright, let's try another card from the deck... can't keep getting all the bad hands." He says to himself, whipping the gun forwards as he surfs at a bright singularity of energy.

Oh, it's just a weapon that's glowing with that power, aimed at the DC offensive. True to the form of Holland, he makes the decision that gets him the least involved of all of it, the rifle raised and aimed at the back of Aki's Brynhildr. "Just what the hell kind of machine's are they making?" Holland rattles off, view augmented by the rifle's scope. That thing looks /brand spanking new/.

Whatever.

The soldier inside is just another dog of the federation... or A-Laws, right? Either under Dewey or with the Federation - Holland simply doesn't care. Goes to show what a brave 'hero' he's supposed to be.

The beam of light fires off, for far more selfish reasons than the pilot it's aimed at. He takes great care to attack Aki's rear as well, as Iron attacks from the front.

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "..No he isn't. I am watching his vitals decline. He doesn't have much in the way of space training.. damnit.. he is such an /idiot/."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Holland Novak transmits, "Yeah? He's not the only one here."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "R! IF YOU DIE, SO SUIKYOSHA HELP ME, I WILL DRAG YOU OUT OF DEATH AND KILL YOU! YOU HEAR ME!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Kazuma Ardygun transmits, "Think he's focusing on a different enemy force ... the Valstork's here if he needs a safe lift outta the combat zone, though. - Mihiro, have Neechan give Nell and R a friendly locator ping"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "..what worries me, is if he is KOed in this type of environment-- Crest doesn't know what will happen to the NEXT. It is designed to handle space.. but it has never had a very hard test in the environment."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu knuckle-cracks. "He's not going to."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "..And we can't get to him if he is stuck in the battle zone."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "I can. Launch the SuiKyosha!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Emperor Xiang Yuan transmits, "Huh? What, hey! I'm still in the Raven's Nest! Don't go taking off~ *RUMBLEEEEEE*"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "... Thank you-- long as someone can yank him out of there encase he falls..." beat pause, "... you-- really do care about him don't you?"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Holland Novak transmits, "Hey, I was about to do it for a little extra on the side!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "Pssawww. Heck no. Why would you say that? He... he just owes me money..."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "Uh-huh.."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Holland Novak transmits, "Must be alot."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu pouts, "Oh fine, what do you want me to say? He's good in the sack?"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Holland Novak transmits, "Better than the other reason."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "I don't know--have you had him in the sack?"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "Not... yet... I'm working on it, okay!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "He's so stubborn!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "... anyways, I need to get back to keeping an eye on him. Hopefully not any more of these Crusaders decide to back stab him."

There are many who wish the power of the newtype for themselves without thinking of just what it would entail, the horror that could come along side the understanding or prehaps of it. There's several preences he knows, Ryusei whose a bit dim but noise, she senses Eight but then comes something like a phalanx of roman solider is a preence it's mechanical it's ordered. It's not inhuman but it's amazingly powerful. It catches Macua off guard the presence of Iron Mask presses down on her as another, one far too much like Judecca she can feel pain, such pain, almost a screaming? a Machine like feeling as well of just being yet another part. Macua actually falls back and sounds like she's in pain. She never wanted this, she never wanted powers like this. But what can she do?

Alina would notices somewthing is wreong at this point her funnels try to keep Sureial at bay. It does not work so well, she's hit while trying to keep the prbital frame at bay. She's breathing raggedly to. The pressure was almost unbearable from both.

"That machine, that orbital frame...it's killing ...the pilot. I can feel it, he's screaming."

Macua now charges up a weapon system a white energy aura surrounds the right hand of the Amazon Ci. Balmarian technology had started to be understood, this was the result a human copy of the Geist Blow.

"GEIST BLOW!"

The Amazon suddenly throws it self at Suriel's machine and just starts attacking, one strike, two strikes then a third to follow it up. The strike going for the machines head.

"IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT YOUR PILOTS?! BAHRAM?!?!

Katina Tarask goes wide eyed in the red Gespenst and growls as she begins taking evasive maneuvers, the Red Gespenst Mk. IV veering out of the path of the forward lasers of the battleship, and she growls, "So that's how you're gonna play?!"

Katina draws out her M90, and growls as she fires off a long burst of bullets, "EAT THIS!!"

The Brynhildr twists at the last moment, slamming its spear roughly against the beam saber; somehow, someway, physics takes enough of a breather to let the lance's bright white beam crash against the Den'an Zon Kai's weapon and parry it, knocking it aside just enough to squeeze past it and clear for distance.

Aki barely gets a moment to slump back in her chair and wipe her forehead with a sigh of relief before there's another angry BRRP BRRP BRRP from her consoles; out of sheer instict she swings the throttle wide open and dives downwards, barely clearing a bright bolt of energy that passes harmlessly overhead. "--oh what, two against one again?!" she huffs to herself, turning up her music volume as she cleverly glosses over the fact it's more like six against two; "I'm /really/ not paid enough for this!"

As the tinny beat kicks in, she nods her head in time with the thumping music and then abruptly swings her mech wide, dodging and weaving in time with the beat and banking into a soaring circular path that takes her alongside then up and over and around Katina's stream of bullets and bolts. Excellent is probably preparing to sue for copyright RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT

She repeats her first attack; a simple, unrefined, and wholly hot-blooded charge with the crackling spear of light.

With a sudden *SCREAM* of pain, Eight Murasame clutches her head, tearing off her helmet as she struggles to breath, and leaving the Jinx flapping about on the lance like a rag doll blown in the wind. Eventually, the unit pulls itself free, but not before the flailing, out of control Mobile Suit is nearly sliced in half, its left arm sent spiralling into the distance. For a few moments, the Jinx drifts away, unable to respond, as the pilot's panic attack subsides.

She's felt worse.

She knows she's felt worse

Somehow... She knows...

And she's not going to die just yet. Not while her mobile suit can still move... And there's an enemy right in front of her.

Gripping the controls hard enough to bend the moulded plastic, Eight opens up the throttle, setting the mobile suit to charge directly at the blinding, overpowering soul in front of her. Gritting her teeth, and fighting through the crushing, oppressive weight, once again, the Altered Human screams.

But this time, she will. Not. Stop.

Kazuma grits his teeth as the battleship maneuvers to open fire, and starts maneuvering ... very erratically. Some times it looks almost like he's presenting what armor the Valhawk is and is about to fly INTO a cannon's output - but he never quite does so, successfully confusing the gunners' aim.

He almost wishes he could see the looks on their faces.

Eventually the barrage subsides and Kazuma takes account of the mobile suits who have rearranged themselves; an annoyed look crosses his face, but he gets back to work nonetheless. If those beam shields are so good against beam attacks ... what about a physical impact?

So he gives it a shot, flying down at a back-to-back pair of MSes and trying to come screaming down the middle, and to forcibly separate them by dint of squeezing the Valhawk in between the two.

Suriel's mech turns to face the Orbital Frame again.

The shots fire down, aiming to try and fill him full of holes. His eyes narrow, but the shield bounces the shots all around him, space warps, and sending them flying in opposing directions. Vier's beam saber, however, manages to pierce the shield, however, the majority of the force of the blow is lost, the blade does dig into the arm of the unit, causing another sharp pain through Suriel's connected body. Then Macua comes in, bashing through the barrier and breaking through his defenses, smashing the unit, again, causing more pain...

Then, the barrier recorrects itself, fully in control as his hand comes up, forming a large pike. He dives towards the Orbital frame, hoping the two units with her get into melee range...

And then suddenly the burst mode is activated, causing a large greenish energy to cover the pike, as it tears a hole through space to try and reach everyone with a single powerful blow aimied to cover a full three sixty area.

His voice reverbs, "Talk is cheap, especially yours."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Macua Huitl transmits, "That machine it's killing the pilot..."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Alina Luddite transmits, "I don't think he cares..."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Yue Rohay transmits, "Even now, there are still such things in circulation..."

And then... Ryusei Date is gone.

Lethe would breathe out a sigh of relief if the emotion had ever become known to her. Instead, she fires the cannons again as the Project SRX team member blazes off into the unknown. The fact that he's running doesn't bother her at all, but some small part of her makes her wonder what's so important that he can flee in the middle of a battle. Oh, what little she knows about Viletta Vadim and the way her head can split open without proper beverages.

Colonel Mauser gives her a stern talking-to, and she frowns a little.

Stupid robot. Stupid robot girl

Still, she has a target to go after, and she'll go for it. With a spin in the space-air, because air totally exists in space if you pretend it does, shut up, the R-Ein's thrusters fire and rocket the Personal Trooper back on-course toward the PLANT once again.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Macua Huitl transmits, "I can feel the screams I don't..think his will is fully his ... it's like Judecca..."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Yue Rohay transmits, "No one's learnt a damn thing since the Titans' days."

The Zweizergain--

Correction, the /Ophanim's/ Zweizergain stretches an arm out to its side; lightning crackles briefly around its hand before leaping into the void, where it swirls around itself to illuminate the blackness. In the space of a second, the electricity has spread into a vague ovoid shape; in two, the spaces between scintillating strands fills with the pulsating gray of what could best be described as a throbbing asshole in the laws of spacetime.

From its depths, a silver hilt is birthed; once the hilt has been grasped and drawn free from the impossibility beside Zweizergain, the broad, multiply curved blade on its other end is revealed and brought to bear upon the Ophanim in a swift, horizontal stroke. The machine cannon round peppering its torso actually leave cracks in its armour, revealing glittering red stones here and there.

"As much as I admire your resolve, you've no real /say/ in the matter, Yue Rohay." The grey aperture beside Zweizergain snaps shut, and as it does the Shadow Mirror command unit raises its blade overhead in a two-handed grip and charges wildly towards the Ophanim. "I welcome you to fight it as long as your body and will hold out, all the same.

Zweizergain's mad rush terminates with a whimper when the machine just passes straight through the Ophanim.

The same goes for--the--second Zweizergain bearing down on the Ophanim.

And--the third.

The fourth stops just short of actual contact with designs on driving its blade directly through the Ophanim's belly; it's then that the first, second and third Zweizergain's all solidify and try to take up positions around the winged mobile suit.

Every single one of them is armed.

And every one will take its turn at trying to slice pieces of the Ophanim free from the rest of its frame.

Meanwhile, R's NEXT has a Zweizergain of its own to contend with.

A Zweizergain that is /also/ bringing a massive, curvy greatsword drawn from nowhere at all against its opponent.

Luckily for R, it seems content for the moment with chasing the NEXT through space, making largely feinting strikes to probe its target's defenses; in the process it flits deftly around each and every one of the Strayed rifle shots, always sure to stay just close enough to be threatening without getting /too/ close and inciting the Crest 'employee' to expend more effort on fleeing.

<Radio: D - WING boys> Vier Winnaar transmits, "The heart of space... is crying... for this man..."

The sound of engines fills Ibis' ears, drowning out the calm, saintly advice and warnings of her copilot as she goes in circles around another pair of Den'an Zons, strafing them with 90mm GG cannon fire and sealing the deal with homing missiles, blurring past the comparatively-clumsy mobile suits on a plume of electric green flame that makes for a handy camera transition wipe, and we go now to the cockpit, where the fiery redhead is gripping her flight stick with one hand and dancing across a very complicated looking keypad to one side with the other.

Something is reflected in her helmet's visor.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [+] LOCK       [+] LOCK     [+] LOCK [+] LOCK           [+] LOCK        [+] LOCK [+] LOCK      [+] LOCK    [+] LOCK [+] LOCK [+] LOCK [+] LOCK [+] LOCK [+] LOCK  [+] LOCK         [+] LOCK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[CTM-02: 99/99]  OK! [CTM-07: 50/50]  OK! [GACL01: 08/08]  OK! [GACL02: 08/08]  OK!

The hydraulics controlling the panels covering Altairlion's ordinance bays hiss and slide into motion, burnished silver panels sliding backwards to reveal an absolute shitton of red-tipped Spigeaul micromissiles. The bottom bays open, and the long, white form of Prominence anti-ship missiles ominously loom against the backdrop of space, rocket motors waiting for that critical command. The G-Accelerator cannons on the wings begin to glow, accelerator coils running hot.

There's a pause. A dramatic silence as the Altairlion breaks through the DC lines in a flurry of explosions and shredded mobile suits, beelining for the command ship, a single, suicidal pilot whose breath is currently held hot in her lungs, heart pounding, the shrill whine of the target lock all she can hear.

Ibis Douglas presses the button, engaging the legendary Go-Time (tm).

The Altairlion's radar cross-section, for the briefest moment in time, goes from being the size of a golf ball to something more like a shipping container covered in magnets as hundreds of missiles come flying out of it in a twisting, confusing trail of white smoke and the dull flare of chemical propellant. It breaks hard to the left, still disgorging ordinance like this is a vertical-scrolling shooter or something. Weather report, bitches: It's a blizzard out there.

The Zamouth Garr becomes the target of one lunatic woman's berserk assault, as hypervelocity HEAP rail-slugs and missiles tear forward for critical points, for escorts, for anything.

One space-fighter against an army?

No god damned problem.

Inciting R to run away was a very hard thing to do. Even as the machine brought down the great sword and it blasted into the Primal Armor, causing sparks of the Kojima field for a moment to flick out, the NEXT didn't seem to mind the close quarters really.

There was a soft laugh emitting from the Strayed as the optical sensor locked onto the Zweizergain he fought. <<"Is that the best you can do with that big sword?">>

Somewhere, Nell just sighed placing her hands into her face, before she reached for her mic, "R! Don't provoke the very thing that can cleave you in half! Crest doesn't know how well that NEXT can handle in space!" Yes, his operator was deathly concerned, because hey-- If he died in space, she be out of a job!

And Crest have to go find a new test rat.

The Strayed quickly rotated around, instead of moving away from the field, it actually moved itself to get back in toward the area. The Kojima Blade fired up once more, before the NEXT attempted to slam the very blade in a wide arc, seeing how deep he could cleave the Kojima Blade through his opponent.

This time, there is no answer from the blue Orbital Frame. The fact is, Lin seems confident enough to not need boastful words. While her own abilities might be lacking, it's clear that the power of 'friendship' is prevailing - as lame as that sounds. Ugh. <<"Targeting system is having trouble tracking the enemy.">> Lin turns her head, watching as Suriel's unit streaks by the cockpit, her own eyes seeming to follow it with no problem. "Switch lock to computerized, and targeting area to manual." <<"Affirmative.">> A new screen pops up in front of Lin, giving a more precise set of targeting cross-hairs.

She's just about to find a focus on that devilish machine with the loud-mouthed pilot when the sweeping attack of that pike comes dangerously close to Mayet. "Defensive maneuvers!" <<"Thrusters engaged.">> It's too late to get out of the way, and it doesn't seem as if the blue Orbital Frame is actually built for raw speed like so many others. Still, where the blow strikes against her raised arm, Mayet seems left mostly intact. With the enemy so close, "Launch feather blades!" Wait, where did she come up with that idea? The words seem to flow out of Lin's mouth even without her actually thinking about it and the AI responds without question. A sweeping blow of small sharp points lashes out in counter even as Mayet moves back to get some space.

With a flick of her hands, Lin shifts Mayet's guns into something more powerful - the long arms changing from pistols into huge rifles that seem to take up much of the Orbital Frame's forearms. She doesn't have time to consider how she knew to do that, or why the change came so naturally. There is only the battle before her. Tunnel-vision, some might say. Intensity. Her hand moves the control orbs, manually tracking the faster moving target as she manually engages the targeting system. "Full power." <<"Rifles at the ready.">> "Fire." Her voice is cold, emotionless, and luckily not transmitted for anyone to hear just how far gone in this battle the young framerunner has gone.

Quatre turns about in his cockpit for a moment, as that pressure excuuding from the Den'an Zon Kai spreads. Another shiver. What was that. Whatever it was, what is before him is more important! The horrible feeling that Qureen is pushing onto Quatre -- ehh -- Vier, is much much worse at the moment. Partially through proximity, partially because it's nowhere as 'calm' or 'cold' as the other. And he can hear, through the Katharon channels he is receiving, that Macua is having a similar experience. That same feeling, that same dread. That this system was slowly /killing/ the pilot inside!

<"That machine is killing you! Don't you value your life!? Every life is important, even yours! Don't cast it away like that!"> Wait, there are people that talk that way in the A-LAWS? Well, it certainly would see that way! After the Mercurius' beam saber cuts through the shield and into the arm of the Qareen, that pain from Suriel just causes Quatre to grit his teeth more. In fact, he felt it almost squeezing down on his heart. "The Heart of Space... is crying... for this man..." Quatre whispers over the radio with the wing-boys. As they are the only ones who should hear those words - and not need to question his identity - nor the words he speaks.

The red unit backs off for a moment, the planetary defenders quickly deploying in a tighter formation as the blade cuts right through! The Mobile Suit is fine, the energy of the shields enough to protect it, but the attack cuts right into two of the discus which soon there-after explode in pretty pink explosions. Why things explode pink in space... is a mystery to all.

Not hesitating for one moment there-after, Quatre launches his machine forwards again, trying to smash the shield into the back of the Qareen the moment it finishes unleashing its assault, to try and knock the pilot around a bit - whilst then stabbing with the beamsaber for its head! He was hoping that if he disabled the head, it would shut down whatever it was that was killing the man inside!

Years ago, Yue Rohay could not have possibly prepared herself for this kind of multi-staged, multi-/creatured/ attack. She had trouble with simple missiles, yet alone attacks wrought out of sheer EOTI technology and/or magic. No one is quite sure. No one except Vindel Mauser.

and maybe that gilliam dude but he's probably styling on lavos right now okay

Now, though, she feels herself more ready. The first one skims past, and some Newtype-like sense... no, not quite. It is perfect integration with her machine, the individual cameras on the machine's body her eyes, each individual steel ligament and hydraulic press her muscles. She bobs, weaves through each of the invisible feint attacks, knowing that for all the fancy manuevers, she will always know where Vindel wishes to strike -- at her.

"Tell me you aren't going to underestimate our tenacity and resources... we've fended off the Balmarians, from the sheer brink of defeat," Yue barks back as she banks a hard roll with her machine to pull out of the danger zone. "What is it that convinces you you will do better?"

It was then time to bring out the firepower -- will she be able to score a hit on this teleporting beast? Yue will have to just try her best... that's the only way she's known.

"Target lock, complete..." Yue whispers, almost feeling a rush at being able to say her old lines again. No, she knows in her mind as it neurally links with her buster that it is so. "Accomodating for target displacement capacity -- error ratio within acceptable range. Buster Rifle: High Discharge."

A low hum whispers through the air as bright lances suckle in through the cannon's muzzle. Several moments later, space crackles around the cannon as Yue lets loose with a bright and wide beam of sustained golden energy.

Somewhere else, Heero Yuy calls his lawyer Roger Smith to prepare for a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Katina's shots roll across the battleship harmlessly; the bullets bound off its heavy armor, splattering along against its forms. The battleship's cannons turn to face the Gespenst, firing harmlessly into the air to ward her away from it defensively. Mobile weapons too close to the bridge were absolute death.

Kazuma's attack flashes outwards; the soldiers split in a heartbeat to allow the valhawk to pass by, firing after him harmlessly as if to encourage him to go away. Something flashes up on his communications console - TRAILER TARGET - PLEASE DISENGAGE TRAILER TARGET - PLEASE DISENGAGE.

DC is asking /nicely/?

But they're not asking the Macross so nicely. As those guns whirl around, the Zamouth Garr's commanding officer Captain Pieter Firmis lets out a shout of surprise. The warning lights blaze across the bridge; Pieter screams "EVASIVE MANEUVERS!" as the guns prepare to fire, and the Zamouth Garr wheels to the side JUST as those almighty nuclear-force bullets skid past it and crash into a Miniature Mobile suit on the other side. The detonation force is extraordinary; the poor Crossbone Vanguard soldier is vaporized in an instant, the shells passing through to embed themselves in a nearby asteroid.

At the same time, Ibis Douglas's Altairlion streaks in, engaging its legendary Go-Time. The missiles streaming forth from the Altairlion blast apart the topmost deck of the Zamouth Garr; inside, Crossbone Vanguard soldiers are suddenly treated to their doors blowing open, sucked into space or vaporized by the heat in an instant. The Zamouth Garr's guns are no match for the speed of the Altairlion; they lance into the sky harmlessly as the Altairlion speeds by. Meanwhile, as Aki's lightning-charged lance swings in, the beam flag staff comes upwards and collides with it in an instantaneous parry; Iron Mask's flag pushes aside the stab, knocking it to the side of his head as the Den'an Zon Kai ducks around her. It leaves him open, once again, to the attack of the Newtype; Eight's GN Beam Lance stabs through the side of the Den'an Zon Kai's face, melting it instantly and leaving a white-and-gold pool of metal where the right side of the helmet once was. Now exposed, its metal skull sparks, the green camera-eyes flashing in the light against her.

Newtype...The thought flashes in his mind once again, a reminder of his foe.

But he had no time for that. The Macross's presence complicated the operation severely; the flag rises, pointing at the SDF-1. The Divine Crusaders' mysterious backup begins shifting; their target has changed significantly. Meanwhile, the Den'an Zon Kai breaks its engagement, speeding off to join the Zamouth Garr at maximum speed.

It was time to take control of the battlefield himself.

The Zamouth Garr docks with the Den'an Zon Kai, and Iron Mask hops out without even waiting for them to close the doors; he pulls along, entering the briddge amidst the explosions of battle.

The soldiers salute as Iron Mask sits down in the captain's chair, folding his fingers across his face. "Reprioritize the Macross as the highest target. We will break the Federation's greatest warship as a symbol of Crossbone Vanguard's unyielding might."

The guns swing about; the armored squads begin to swarm; all guns are focused on the Macross, the Den'an Zon forwards squads doing the same. Beams and bullets fill the air around the Macross like a monstrous dance as the Den'an Zon Squads swarm to protect the ship from their attackers.

The attack on the PLANT has been delayed.

But now the Macross is getting it full force. Uhhh...good?

"This isn't a duel!" Holland shouts back over the intercom, "What the hell do they teach you these days?!" The thrusters on the board flare up as the Terminus ducks, making it more aerodynamic! ... In space. Habits die hard.

"You don't even know the first thing about why people fight!" Coming from a 'mrec' the intent might be wasted.

Slugs pass through space, right infront of the Terminus. Grasping the front of the board, Holland changes the angle, tearing over the slug mere feet as it traverses space towards the fleet. If there was a vacuum, the Terminus would be thrown off its board! Small miracles.

Following the Valhawk's own dive, the thrusters flare, pulling it closer to the other Trailer machine. "No hard feelings Kazuma!" The boomerang knife is flicked up, drawn and held as he gains on the Valhawk, managing to pass by - before the sudden message comes. "Guess no feelings at all!" He adds.

The amazing one woman DC Genocide would instead be the target of the knife, the Terminus positioning itself under, relatively, to the Altairlion as it rips through the squad, aiming to catch it under the front and just go from there!

Macua Huitl scores a hell of a hit on the orbital frame, the barrier shatters and she scores a hit on the other machine. She's trying to force down both the presence of Suriel. Not to mention Iron Mask, but more hostile actions are comming in, she barely evades the attack from the orbital frame. She's not got much time for an counter attack. She can't even do a melee attack he's forced to make a quick strike with the funnels three come after Suriel from below and two from behind.

She keeps an eye on Alina she's worried her friend has been remebering things and who knows what might trigger memories comming back to her, prehaps dangerously so in the middle of a fire fight.

Of course, for something going /that/ damn fast there's a good chance the boomerang knife is going to be slag from the friction, not counting who the hell would design something like that!

"This one's got to be tied to the last!" The type of machine is different, but they're both /not giving a damn/ in the middle of a battlefield. Could it be just the in thing with robot piloting youths!?

Suriel's cockyness catches him unaware by Alina's onslaught. The power of the attack breaks the barrier, causing him to fly back and spin out of control for a moment. Growling, he quickly corrects himself, the barrier restablished as he flies upwards. Macua and Vier come in, the beam saber aims to try and cut again, but the barrier and Suriel's own movement is becoming impossible to land a hit. The funnels find less of a Suriel to hit...and the pilot is breathing heavily, the pain from each attack starting to get to him...

The voice of Vier comes over the band...

"Shut up! If you think I could do anything about it, that I would?! I'm a weapon...this is what it means to be a Graduate of the school...but that's fine.."

"I ENJOY MY WORK!" he shouts out, as a large barrier of energy starts to condense...and then expand, a wave of green fire aims to consume the mayet, before it condenses again, and explodes in a massive wave of fire.

Vier finds that the Qareen is diving at him, before sword breakers are launched, each one aims to ram into him, before releasing their payload of hit beam death into the unit.

Katina growls as she watches the Scout squads come out, and works to start dodging them, as she growls and says, "This is going to take way the hell too much time!" With that, she seeks out a different target. Namely one that targetted her earlier.

HI HOLLAND!!

Katina pops out her M90 once more, and fires off a spray of bullets and grenades, yelling. "TAKE OFF! Don't need you distracting people!!"

<Radio: G - A-LAWS Secure> Vier Winnaar transmits, "Refresh my memory. The School... wasn't that a Federation project?"

As damaged as it is, the R-Ein's retros fire once, then one fires off while another fires from behind, spinning the Personal Trooper around. A third burst sets it steady, and the fourth is when Lethe puts her foot to the proverbial floor. Lethe feels the tense pull of the machine as she sinks into the seat a little more, the G-force exerted by the sudden changes in direction and velocity doing little to her highly superior to all mortal flesh-bags body.

The dark gray Personal Trooper reaches down to it's side, undocking the G-Railgun. While not the most powerful weapon in the arsenal, the rifle has precision-- and at a time like this, with the distance she has from the Zweizergain and the Ophanim, it makes all the difference.

"Sniping target from behind."

The internal chambers rev up, and energy levels spike. One solid slug fires with a heavy *CRACK* heard through the reverberation of the R-Ein's chassis-- and zips through space, aimed to crack Yue's machine squarely in the back of the head with the bullet!

"It looks like they're leaving the PLANTs alone now, oniichan," Mihiro reports as Kazuma finishes trying to outfly those mobile suits - again, to less than optimal effect. But they're still combat-worthy, so things could be worse - as always.

"Nice to know somebody persuaded them of the error of their ways," Kazuma remarks dryly. "But the ship isn't going anywhere yet ..."

It looks like their mobile units are going after the Macross instead!"

Kazuma scowls. "All right, stabilize our systems - I'm gonna need all the maneuverability we've got. The Macross has saved everyone's bacon more than a few times; we owe them an assist."

And with that, the Valhawk abandons its efforts to pierce the Crossbone flagship's perimeter defenses, and zooms across the battlefield, closing on one of the Den'an Zons and trying to snipe it with a mix of Laser Vulcan and Beam Shot Launcher fire.

The Zamouth Garr turns all of it's guns towards the Macross itself and fires. The squadrons of Den'an Zon fire thier weapons at the ship, smashing into armor, with some of the heavy fire from the mother ship itself being deflected away by the glowing half-spheres of force energy that slide along the Macross' hull.

"Section Bravo-18 has a hull breach. Personell are evacuating and automated sealing systems are working." one of the bridge crew reads off from her screen. "So they have the heart for a real fight after all, hmn?" Global wonders aloud. "Send in Angel Squad. Clear a path towards the enemy mother ship."

A trio of VF-1S Super Valkyries swoop down from over head the MAcross, streaking through space towards the small mobile suits surrounding the Crossbone Vanguard mothership. The three fighter craft work in flawless unison, twisting and weaving through space as they fire missiles, gunpods and lasers. Transforming from Fighter to Battroid as they dance their deadly dance to tear through enemy machines.

Ibis' biggest problem here is that her attack run leaves her flying in a really straight line, and it doesn't matter how fast you're going, because computers are really actually very good at figuring out things like trajectories. The Altairlion, space-jet of justice that it is, pulls away from the Zamouth Garr and does a barrel roll, thrusters pulsing once as it prepares to double back for a second round!

That's about when a giant-robot sized knife comes boomeranging around and jams straight through one of the wings, and the readouts all go bright red as broken electronics and hydraulic systems just throw their hands in the air and declare that they don't, in fact, know what the fuck anymore. Ibis pitches forward in her seat and strains against her harness as her sweet ride copes with the new sensation of being 'stabbed as hell'.

She works fast, flicking switches and pressing buttons that make obnoxiously loud beeps and rerouting damaged systems on the fly. Well, not really, her copilot manages /that/.

"Ibis! If we take another hit like t--"

"I know! I'm taking us into Doll Configuration, the Tesla Drive can't take much more of this!"

The first thing on the Altairlion to transform is the left arm, which unfolds out of the left wing, reaches up and grabs the knife sticking through it, yanks it out and hurls it into the distance. Through the magic of cinema, it returns /exactly/ where it ought to, and then the rest of the silver Armored Module follows suit, chassis unlocking and sliding apart as the various parts rearrange themselves into a tall, elegant humanoid figure, G-Accelerator Nacelles sliding around to the back like big obvious fins. Big obvious railgun fins.

Ibis also axe-kicks a nearby Den'An Zon, and her erstwhile copilot frantically works to restore full functionality to the damaged Armored Module's systems. Not that it appears to be having any great effect.

"Just gotta keep 'em from getting to the colony...!"

The Altairlion, damaged as it is, elects to ignore the knife-throwing veteran in the distance to continue focusing fire on the Zamouth Garr, attempting to land on it where the CIWS can't reach it and open up with, you guessed it, more missiles and railguns, raking conventional weapons across the hull and generally trying to make enough of a nuisance of herself to /save the colony/!

She's so predictable.

Aki's machine is lost under a hail of gunfire for a brief and precious moment; the next, it has rocketed out of the immediate cover, joints sparking and whining. Her plasma spear buckles and warps as the power momentarily gives way, but her hands are already flying across the console to try to divert power from subsystem to subsystem. The demands on the reactor overall are high; fortunately, the Tesla Leicht makes very, very good technology.

The spear reasserts itself just in time to block a wildly swung energy attack from one poor misguided mook, and the thrusters kick back in a second later as the Brynhildr twists and football-kicks it straight into two more, burning forwards and straight through the ensuing explosion. For no particular reason, her mp3 player kindly chooses to play a home run jingle.

She bobs and weaves through the battlefield, keeping her target in sight; despite the rain of fire from the assault squads, she has eyes for nothing but the shifting focus of the Iron Mask, and is building up both an excellent head of steam and a solid roar as she races back into close combat with him.

Her spear strikes, aiming for any chunk of armor she can find with two sets of threats; the first charge is a simple crash into the side of the machine, trying to bring the full length of the white blade to bear. The moment it looks vaguely as if it's going to hit Aki hits the second - positively learning on the ignition button her spear ignites repeatedly, sending two large contrail wings of coolant back behind the head of the spear and ejecting repeated spinning and spent canisters as she tries to flood the internals of the machine with superheated plasma.

The Jinx pulls it lance free, and is forced to back away as Iron Mask retreats to his command ship. Eight slumps in her seat, breathing hard, as her mind struggles to recover from the impact. Gripping the controls once again, the pilot reactivates her Mobile Suit just in time to meet the Mobile Suit team emerging from the carrier.

With contemptuous ease, the Enhanced Newtype pulls her suit through a few dizzying manouvers, evading the scattering of incoming beamfire, and heads for the command ship. With her suit's one free arm, she reaches for the beam bazooka, and locks it into place on her shoulder.

That... thing wouldn't be escaping her that easily. And with a soul burning so brightly...

Levelling the bazooka, Eight fires a round at the warship, the luminescent warhead barrelling across the void.

<Radio> Tightbeam to Macua Huitl and Alina Luddite: Vier Winnaar lowers his voice -- totally not Quatre Raberba Winner, "We gotta work together! I'll try to trap him in my shields - you two unleash your attacks whilst he is caught! Try to aim away from the cockpit!"

Strayed's Kojima Blade doesn't connect with Zweizergain because there /is/ no more Zweizergain in the AC's immediate vicinity; it, along with the three duplicates surrounding the Ophanim all race to rejoin the origin unit as its arms - and Vindel's arms, within the cockpit - rise above their respective heads. A deep blue aura blazes to life around the machine, contrasting the Ophanim's violent golden glow.

"Of course I won't," he simply transmits to the Ophanim's pilot. "I would expect nothing less--HAAAA!"

With his kiai, Vindel and Zweizergain thrust their right arm forward while sliding their right leg out until they've settled into a wide, sturdy stance; perhaps he means to defend against the Buster Rifle blast the old fashioned way, by crossing both arms before the Zweizergain's face or something so that it takes only a minimal amount of damage.

Or perhaps, when the rifle unleashes its havoc upon the Shadow Mirrors' Colonel, he intends to fal back upon more esoteric means.

The bluish aura surrounding Zweizergain explodes outwards in a harmless line of kinetic force; as it passes, an entire /column/ of Zweizergains stands ready to meet the Ophanim's Minovsky-powered fury.

One by one, they melt into absolute nothingness as Ophanim's purifying light washes over them; by the time it fades, there's nothing at all left of the spiny monster.

"Ha--" Vindel lowly exhales. "Haha--hahaha!"

Curiously, there's no mania to be found in his laughter, just joy; genuine, straight from the gut exuberance like one might expect of a young boy excited to find his first toad. Each joyous syllable is punctuated by the appearance of a Zweizergain somewhere throughout the battlefield, still armed with its wickedly curved blade; each sports the same fresh, gaping hole in the center of its armour, revealing sparkling redness underneath.

Most don't do anything but float there, which is all they really need to do to serve as distractions; several, however, launch into motion the moment they appear. One tries to bury its knee into the Ophanim's side right after Lethe's skillful sniping; another tries to slice into Mayet's shoulders in a vicious arc, while two more try to greet Amazon Gundam and Mercurius with stereo hilt-bashes.

The very last Zweizergain to appear pops into existence right in front of the Strayed. Its arm is extended, its fingers splayed; light dances along its palm in a brief warning before a scintillating dragon composed of raw, pulsating energy leaps forth with intentions on snaking directly through the Armored Core's reactor in the hopes of disrupting it.

"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

The Den'an Zon in Kazuma's sights is torn to shreds by the vulcan fire in a heartbeat, a beam shot blasting forth to finish him off and pierce through the chest in a nasty, nasty explosion. Again, his friends pull around to take his spot almost reflexively; these troops are trained for nonverbal, non-radio commands, and they know their place in this dance extraordinarily well.

This serves them well when the Itano Circus - Douglas Remix erupts from the Altairlion; they break into a flower formation, their guns firing downwards into the missile swarm to explode them before they can reach their targets. Such dedication and decisiveness without any tactical support...!

The VF-1S Super Valkyries, however, are much more troublesome. The Angel Squad rips through the first lines of the Den'an Zon squads without any trouble, blasting through the forward machines and leaving space-dust in their wake as they streak forward on their path of destruction. Space lights up with lasers and explosions; the path of the angel squad is brutal indeed, and paved in blood.

Speaking of paving stuff in blood, Eight Murasame's GN Bazooka lights up the night pretty nastily; it explodes on the Zamouth Garr's armor, blowing open another hole and sucking out more of the soldiers into the horrible vacuum of space. The Zamouth Garr's emergency systems seal the hatch behind them, condemning them to the cold of space...

...and Aki's spear tears RIGHT through the side of the Zamouth Garr, sheering off its entire mobile suit launch catapult in one shot. The other launch catapult hurriedly begins recovering Den'an Zons as the catapult that had been holding the Den'an Zon Kai not moments ago explodes into nothingness, rocking the ship left and right as though a tidal wave had swept across the sea of space.

Iron Mask is Not Happy. The waves of his Not Happy can be felt all across the battlefield, the extraordinary pressure of the Cyber-Newtype tinged with a barely-concealed irritation as the gears begin to turn faster and faster. The mechanical, cold, heartless pressure accelerates, faster and faster, as Iron Mask stands and throws out his hand dynamically. "Prepare to fire all guns. Spread the cannons across the field; light the signals and make sure our squads escape. Focus fire on the Macross itself; primary cannons, punch through!"

The Zamouth Garr's guns begin to blaze once more as the lights of Zamouth Garr's beamflag change to red. The Den'an Zons evade immediately, clearing the path of the guns as they sweep across the battlefield explosively, targetting as many of its foes - both support machines from the Macross and the actual players who are shooting at the Zamouth Garr - as it possibly can. Meanwhile, the two enormous forward guns blast forward explosively, light filling the gap between the Zamouth Garr and the SDF-1 Macross as it streams forward towards the great Super-Dimensional Fortress.

And...communication, flashing across the Macross's (and every other EFA officer)'s screens:

HOW DARE YOU BRING CIVILIANS INTO A COMBAT ZONE, EARTHSPHERE FEDERATION

...what the fuck is going on?

There is a twitch at the corner of Lin's eye as her attacks finally seem to hit their mark. The little connections in her brain are slowly starting to re-wire themselves, figuring out how to do the things they used to even around damaged tissues. This exercise is proving more useful than first imagined, although it's clear that she still has a long way to go before she can pilot Mayet efficiently. In fact, it would be easy to guess that a new pilot was using the Orbital Frame. The way it moves, the way it targets, it all seems a bit 'off' from what one would expect in standard training.

"A weapon..." Lin repeats the other pilot's words, something in them striking a cord. The cold mask of her features breaks momentarily, causing her to lift her hands from the controls. <<" Lin? ">> It is the first time that Amit has ever referred to her by name, but it is impossible to tell if it is using the name she calls herself, or some name it knew from before. "I... I'm fine." The answer comes quickly as the framerunner steadies herself, placing her palms back on those glowing control orbs.

She /is/ fine, at least until that wave of green fire strikes out at her, sending the blue Orbital Frame tumbling backwards in space. "Thrusters!" A moment later, Mayet has steadied her flight, her armor looking a bit singed around the edges.

The two rifles that make up Mayet's arms swivel back around, moving with an almost eerie ease for just a moment as Lin tracks Suriel's movement. He may enjoy his work, but there is no enjoyment on the girl's features as she taps the controls once more. Then, just as she's about to fire off a shot, a voice comes over the radio. Blinking, Lin seems to take a moment to consider before drawing backwards, the two rifle-arms of the Orbital Frame charging as she gets distance between herself and the Qareen. "Wait for the opening. Then fire at full strength." <<" Affirmative. ">>

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Vindel Mauser transmits, "Argenum-1--take the opening I've given you! Crush them! Take what's rightfully yours!"

<"How can you possibly enjoy killing!?"> Vier calls out through the space-speakers as Suriel calls out something rediculous like that. <"If you can't stop it, Then let us help you stop it!"> He continues on to call out before raising those shields again and swinging his machine to the side. However, one of the sword-breakers manages to catch the left leg of the red unit and the moment it unleashes its charge, it blasts right through the leg! The other three find themselves halted by the powerful electro-shields generated by Quatre's unit.

However, with his attention so aimed towards Suriel's unit, and the overwhelming dread and emotions coming from it, the youth fails to notice the sudden appearance of the Zweizergain. "Huh? Where'd~ UGHHH!" The Mercurius is thrown forwards as the hilt crashes against the head-unit of the machine and quickly fries a section of monitors within the machine.

He's flying blind now, for a moment, but one screen is still up! Fuzzy as it may be, it's up. And Suriel's emotions are enough for him to concentrate on. The discusses, all twelve of them, rush straight for the Qareen and try to surround it, flipping inside out - and raise their shields! It's attempting to capture it and will open the windows only when Alina and Macua fire their attacks through it.

It was all going a little too good -- a little too planned, wasn't it?

In the midst of her firing routine with the Buster Rifle, Lethe's bullet is like an insidious stealthed serpent snaking through. Yue's sensors -- and in turn, her mind -- catch it far too late for her to be able to do anything with it, and the moment that slug lands against the Gundanium shell encasing the cameras in the Ophanim's head--

"AAAAGH!" Yue exclaims all of a sudden as she feels the tremors and feedback spike throughout her entire body. Her nerves are going into hyperdrive as she might as well have felt trauma and shock equivalent to being shot in the back of her head, forced to abandon her piloting as she more just struggles to keep herself from passing out in shock.

FLASHBACK

"... you're not going to keep me from piloting," Yue remarks as she stands up, reaching for her gloves to sheath her cybernetically grotesque contraptions that once might be called 'hands'.

The doctor stares back towards her. "The cyber rigged to your nerves are digging in there deeper and deeper, Ms. Rohay. It's also doing a number on your immune system, your blood circulation--"

"I'm dying," Yue confirms with a somewhat blunt mutter.

She could feel it, too. Her eyes feel fainter, her hearing more scarce, and injuries take longer to heal. She looks towards her hands and buttons her shirt up once more, asking, "How long do I have?"

PRESENT TIME

Yue coughs up a little coagulated blood from the corner of her mouth as she thanks herself for her lack of reaction of touching the back of her head with her exposed cybernetic hands. It would be far worse for her to give this up now. Chop her hands off? Live handless the rest of her life? Accomplish nothing and discard everything she's worked for thus far?

Her senses kick into overdrive again when she sees the Zweizergain multiply again. It's like fighting a nightmare, a machine that can appear and reappear and reconstruct itself at will, and she just twists around with what little prowess she has left over the wings as the Zweizergain's knee connects against the cockpit and flings her onto one side of her cockpit.

"No... I can still... do this," Yue adamantly and stubbornly comments to herself, staring towards Lethe again and holding her rifle aloft, breathing in deep and focusing hard as she makes a decision -- eliminate the distraction before returning to the Zweizergain. It's going to be easier said than done.

Her breathing calm as that single crosshair floats over her cerebral functions, flitting over delicately... and then turning red.

"E.S.P.Rade neural link, locked. Dedicating Progears to adjustment. Mars Matrix sub-configuration : results positive. 'D-D-Pachi' iterative crosshair lock, confirmed. Buster Rifle : Maximum Discharge."

The camera angles go dutch as a loud hum echoes from deep within the Buster Rifle's spent muzzle, its metals melting and fatigued from the constant shots that Yue places upon it. But it is her lifelong partner, and she knows what it's capable of....

...a gleaming bright beam of hope that cuts across the battlefield of space, chasing on through to try to sunder the R-Eins whole with it.

Macua Huitl funnels? She's got quite good with funnels Then suddenly there's a bunch of Vindels. Like that old movie she saw once, that had the creepy VR world with the spec ops guy gone viral. This is far too much like that, and she fires several shots from her funnel at Vindel. She barely avoids the attack and has to turn her attention to Suriel she can hear over the comm and she frowns.

" If that's what you say!"

The funnels start shooring in a fire format that's almost like an old shooter level. She works the shots trying to pin Suirel down for her comrades to follow up.

Ibis' eyes go wise and she nearly loses the grip on her controls like someone who is getting totally thrashed at Street Fighter MXCIV - Turbo Championship Tournament Hyper Fighting EX Gaiden Edition as the Altairlion's missile bays totally empty themselves all over the Zamouth Garr, only to get sniped off with some of the most sexy point defense that war in the Earth Sphere has ever known.

The silver AM burns backwards, and Ibis prepares for another vicious blow! But her copilot has other ideas. Namely, she reminds her that: "Enemy vessel's main guns are tracking! 95% charge... Ibis, /move/!" and the redhead responds in kind, with a snap of "I know!"

The Altairlion turns around and uppercuts a Den'an Zon before burning clear of the Zamouth Garr's titanic main guns, and the cockpit has a fade-to-white moment as the mighty discharge behind it completely overwhelms the cameras, whose glare adjustment is not ready for this kind of thing, and Ibis is flying blind for a couple of seconds, spraying cannon fire in random directions to try and ward off any opportunists as her humanoid war-machine slowly regains vision.

There's an uncomfortable bump as the Altairlion collides with a similarly blinded Den'an Zon, and because it belongs to a hero, it regains vision first and quickly grabs the suspiciously thuggish-looking mobile suit with a manipulator arm around the 'throat', holding it close as if it were some kind of hostage. Okay, this just got dumb.

"Ibis, that's--" "Shut up, Tsugumi, I know what I'm doing!"

The Altairlion's elongated G-Accelerator nacelles swing upwards to point at the Zamouth Garr, a brilliant spark of gold-green gathering deep in the barrel as another taxpayer-funded rail slug is accelerated well past the speed the material it was made out of was designed to safely travel, and then fired at the lumbering warship with an impressive and possibly unrealistic amount of recoil, wispy trails and afterimages in its wake.

LOTS OF LASERS!! Katina gets hits by lots of lasers and because of this, her attempt at GESPENST KIIIIICK Holland failed miserably.

So what better thing to do than GESPENST just fire everything else she's got, once she's picks her nearly wrecked Gespenst up, and roars, and screams, "EAT THIS!!" As she fires missiles and her CP Cannon in a full assault on... HOLLAND! Because SHE WANTS HIM TO EAT PAIN!

The Strayed wasn't expecting what happens next. His target vanishes and then suddenly there it was again. Though as the spark of light happens, the NEXT quickly tries to pull back opening fire with the machine gun.

The energy dragon comes out and slams into the NEXT. The Supercharger of a Kojima generator goes on the fritz, all the generators located within the machine go crazy. If the NEXT was probably on the ground and not in the vacuum of space, it may actually be smoking and sparking after the assault.

<<"..must..regain..">> was the only words R could whisper out in pain.

Nell's voice speaks over his radio, "R! What is going on? Are you alright?"

Strayed tries to get itself stabilized, hell-- R himself is as the NEXT thrusts back quickly away from the field, though for other reasons as well. <<"..I.. don't know what that was.. but.. having trouble focusing.. tired.">>

"You need to get out of there R. At least far enough we can get you."

<<"Distance.. I can give you.. retreat.. there is only one way to retreat..">>

"R! Don't!"

R was a stubborn man; he had to be. Though some could also say he was an idiot, a smarter man would know when he was outmatched, right? <<"..you can only learn by failure..">> He whispered softly to himself. On the shoulder of the NEXT, a large cannon came around. It was that of a grenade launcher. Then with a flicker of light down deep in the barrel, it soon blasted out an explosive force for his target. <<"EAT IT YOU MOTHER --">>

The battleship's cannonade streaks across the void of space, failing to hit the tumbling, cartwheeling GNXIII, as Eight Murasame pulls the crippled suit through a series of evasive manouvers, diving closer and closer to the warship. The reason becomes obvious after a short while: She's getting to within close range of her Beam Lance, as she stows her Bazooka at her side.

Levelling the lance once again, she doesn't move to charge the warship... But instead, the lance begins to spin, like a massive drill bit. Holding the Jinx on a close pass over the Crossbone's flagship, she hods down the suit's firing stud. Instead of the usual bust of beam fire from the Jinx's lance, a barrage erupts from its firing ports. A continuous stream rains down towards the Zamouth's hull, aiming to tear a large, jagged scar across the surface!

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Nell Aulter transmits, "This-- doesn't make since.. His vitals are low, but they are spiking all over the place. One moment they stop, next they are back to normal.. Just what is going on."

Aki is getting into her groove in a big way; as the catapult of the Zamouth Garr falls away, victim of her still shining spear, her machine immediately rockets underneath it and dives downwards, circling around the bottom of the craft to neatly inhabit its blind spot just in time to avoid the massive quantity of AA fire it dumps out into the space around it.

As the forward cannons quiet again, the Brynhildr lands on the underside of the hull with a deep crunch of angry and twisting metal and a distinctly unhappy sound of buckling bulkheads; tapdancing on the side of a ship with a set of plasma blasters on your feet is not generally something you're meant to do in deep space, let alone when you're being shit at. Aki grits her teeth and gives her front window a bemused and happy grin followed by a deep breath; she's not entirely able to believe she's about to try what she's about to try, but that there sure is the life of a hotshot robot pilot.

"Hraaaaaah--!" sounds over the radio in traditional hot-blooded style as she suddenly slams the spear point-blank into the side of the Zamouth Garr and JUST DOES IT in a manner that would make Adidas broad, the bulk of her Tesla mech sprinting along and up the side of the battleship and dragging the white spear in its hands much like an angry blue can-opener.

By luck, design, or just some bizarre intersection of the two, the Valhawk winds flying practically STRAIGHT THROUGH one of the battleship's beam-cannon blasts. Fortunately, they're going fast enough that it just cooks off a ton of armor rather than immediately obliterating them - but it does enough damage to rattle Kazuma and Mihiro, and Kazuma breaks off rather than go for another attack run; the fact that he managed to peg a dodging mobile suit is moderately satisfying, but considering how the Valhawk's diagnostics just went from 'this is kind of crazy, you know' to 'are you *TRYING* to get killed; if so, keep fighting'?

Better part of valor. Kazuma grits his teeth, breaks away from the fray, and starts heading back to the Valstork, skirting the edges of the ongoing combat. "Mihiro, give R a holler, tell him that the bus is leaving shortly and we'd like him to be on it ..."

"Relaying message," Mihiro answers.

Suriel's skill is remarkable, being able to stand up to three aces at once. Suriel pushes himself harder...even harder now that Vindel's eyes are upon him.

Suriel groans with effort as his chemically enhanced brain struggles to keep up with three extremely fast machines, his body moving...but even he was unable to keep up with that much fire power.

What he could not dodge, the barrier absorbed. But even it had limits...attacks being redirected away...but eventually it too fell short.

Suriel dives towards his hated opponets for one last attack...

Until a stray shot caught him, tearing the mech apart as finally the metatron regeneration gave out. Suriel, unable to attack howled in pain and fury...

"Argh...you don't get it at all." he curses. "You won't have your friends the next time, bitch. You better improve, or I am going to /kill/ you.." he says, before the Unit is forced to disengage, shooting off towards the transport.

He has some dishonor to attend to.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "I'm sorry, I am not strong enough yet!"

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Tsssk."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "Shut up. I did more damange than YOU could have done."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "I /don't care/, Suriel."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "I just want that unit back."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "If at all possible, see if you can launch a detector of sorts onto it."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "Or get a stealth drone to follow it when it leaves."

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Ascian Luddite transmits, "I wanna know who sent that machine, so I can personally cut their head off."

/Shit/.

That's the magnitude of what goes through Holland's mind as the boatload of missiles come crashing down upon the Terminus. The sheer /shockwave/ of the force that impact the LFO causes Holland to rear back, head smashing against the controls to cause a nice leak of blood - but it's not what goes on the outside of the head that matters.

The impact leaves Holland reeling, losing conciousness as the LFO drifts off from the board, missiles seperating it from the ref board and ... both legs. The arms are possibly getting a divorce as Katina still speaks.

OiRanmaruInside Holland's MindOiRanmaru

There is an empty white room. Inside, a woman, a schoolteacher. Schoolteacher Katina. A bowl is put out before Holland. He glances down. Razors. Tacks.. Porcuspines...

"Milk?" He asks, "There's got to be some milk! I can't eat it withou-" A ruler slams against the desk. Katina the Schoolteacher leans over. "/No/." " I want you to EAT PAIN ".

"YO! HOLLAND! YO, you still there!?"

"Gnnh... Moondoggy? What the hell?" "You just wiped out man! Really gnarly stuff!" "Shit...." Holland grasps his head, a fresh gaping wound against his head, a warm and sticky trail of blood coating his hair. "That bad?"

"The worst!" The M-Dog responds, affirmitively, the coralian crack dream haze leaving from Holland.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Alina Luddite transmits, "Looks like I made a 'friend'."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Alina Luddite transmits, "Fire Dancer, do we have a secondary target?"

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Macua Huitl transmits, "I'm looking for one hold on."

The beam comes screaming toward the R-Eins. A ray of hope for some, but a brilliant harbinger of destruction for others. Lethe's grip on the controls shifts violently as she attempts to manuver the Personal Trooper away from the incredible torrent of energy. There are no two ways about it-- there is no way the R-Ein would be able to withstand a direct hit from an energy cannon like that...

... or for that matter, an indirect one.

It strikes the machine on the angle and on the run, relative high to the blast. Immediately, the left leg is turned to superheated slag and detonates, as well as the left arm and the lower right leg. The cracks in the armor and the rips and tears already present from certain Ryuseis and Rs widen and groan as the entirety of the PT's chassis tries to rip itself apart. The engines strain, the Tesla Drive starts to overheat.

Before the beam can properly die down, the R-Ein throws the G-Railgun to the side, the hand sizzling and starting to melt even as it takes hold of one last gun. Without the left arm to balance it, the task becomes nigh-impossible, and she just doesn't have the thrust to maneuver out of it right now--

The cockpit heats up.

It heats up enough that the zipper of her leather jacket stings on her skin, that her sunglasses feel like they're going to deform and melt on her head. The consoles start to flood and spark with static, and Lethe Rusina, W-18, comes dangerously close to a cockpit breach she would not be able to recover from. She may have come into contact with Koji Kabuto or Ryusei Date one time too many, because as that gun lines up it's last, desperate shot, she yells:

"Graviton Cannon: FIIIIIIIIIRE!!"

-- and the muzzle flares before a dark, angry blast erupts from that large hand-held cannon while the the outer frame of the gun starts to heat up in the light of the buster rifle. One more shot--

-- and she can't afford to miss.

The Zamouth Garr speeds in for the Macross, the larger ship's contingent of Destroids turn to face the Crossbone ship, firing their cannons in a withering hail of fire, which fails to slow down the ship or divert it's fire. THe weapons impact across the hull of the Macross, rocking it hard as the hull is breached in several points at once.

"Hull breach. Sections Aloha 21, 24, 25! Bravo 13 and Charlie 22 and 23!" Vannessa shouts from her station as she holds on to her console. "Incoming transmission from the enemy... something about endagering civillians..?" she sounds confused.

Global grunts as he slams into the back of his chair. "/They/ accuse /us/ of endangering civillians?"

Global pulls up his intercom phone and changes it to ship-to-ship broadcast. "I don't know who you are. But when you attack and intend to invade a /civillian/ agricultural colony, you do not get to accuse us of endagering civillian lives. If you wish to prevent civillian loss of life, you were granted the oportunity to retreat honorably and refused it. Anyone here is here, fully aware of the danger to their personal lives, and have made the choice to stand against your aggression." Global then slams the shipphone down.

"All guns, traverse turret. Plus 14 degrees, left 18 degrees. Bring the ship 25 degrees to starboard and full thrust for 15 seconds." The bridge explodes into a flurry of commands as the crew get to work.

The ship's engines flare to bright life, pushing the 18 million ton ship forward at the highest speed it can manage as it turns to the left. Weapons turrets across the hull turn and begin firing. Salvos of cannon shells missiles and beam weapons streak through space to intercept the path of the Zamouth Garr, attempting to shred it to pieces under withering onsalught as the two ships pass each other.

<Radio: B - DC Tactical> Suriel Misaki transmits, "Disfuckingabled. I am getting out of here before th-argh..."

KABOOM! The Den'an Zon explodes as the SUPER FEDERATION HERO IBIS DOUGLAS tears it to shreds and doesn't even care, flying towards the the lumbering warship without looking back. In the wake of the smoke, the rail slug is blasted forth, piercing right through the ship's outer armor and setting off all sorts of loud alarms; the ship itself tilts to the side from the sheer force of the slug as the Altairlion blasts pasts, squadron soldiers muttering to themselves about how fast the damned thing is.

"Sir," Captain Pieter urges as Eight Murasame's beam lances along the guns, melting through one of the laser batteries and sending it trailing off into the sky, "We're taking too much fire. I advise we pull out and-"

"Captain Pieter," Iron Mask replies coolly, the Den'an Zons sweeping to follow Eight and prevent her from doing any more significant damage to the machine; they chase her with Shot Lancers blazing, bullets scattering off into the sky.

Another squad of Den'an Zons comes sweeping in to intercept against Aki; before she can even get close, they engage her in a stabbing attack, allowing the Zamouth Garr's defenses to tighten up and make that stab impossible. Still, she manages to plow through a few of the Den'an Zons, the explosions lighting up the sky as their scattering parts go flying into space. If that had impacted the Zamouth Garr....!

"Sir," Pieter replies urgently, "The colony is a lost cause now. If we're going to capture it, we should-"

"Are you...contradicting my orders, Captain Pieter?" Iron Mask's face turns to stare into Pieter's; the man tugs at his collar, backing away as he feels the pressure against the back of his skull. He wasn't even a newtype...to have those attentions directed on him was...frightening, to say the least. He forced down a swallow of spit, shaking his head and backing away.

"N-no, my lord," Pieter exhales. The pressure disappears instantaneously, and Iron Mask nods, resuming his attention on the screen. The battle was heating up, but Iron Mask was certain - remove the Macross, conquer the colony.

"Do not respond to that hail," Iron Mask warns Pieter as Global's demands scream over the radio; Pieter pauses, then nods, folding his hands behind him. "The citizens were warned when we arrived. They had ample chance to retreat; those who remained, we shall not target. Those upon the Macross..."

Iron Mask stands. "They were dead the moment they entered the battlefield."

"Send tactical data to the Den'an Zons. Target every mobile suit still on the field; ignore the retreating Trailers and the Divine Crusaders."

The Den'an Zons do as told instantaneously as the flags swap colors; Ibis, Aki, Eight, and Katina are about to find themselves completely swarmed by the Den'an Zons, beam sabers and shot lancers stabbing and shooting in perfect harmony like choreographed dancers on a stage of destruction. Each Den'an Zon squad knows its place, each soldier knows its target; this is *discipline*.

Iron Mask folds his hands behind him. "Do we have enough energy left for the main cannon?"

"Yes sir," Pieter replies, pressing his hand against his throat as if ensuring that he can still breathe. "Shall we fire it one last time to sink the Macross?"

Iron Mask's breathing is the only sound on board the bridge for a few moments, as the ouside rages with explosions. Finally, he shakes his head, holding out a hand. "Send an Assault Squad of Den'an Zons. We'll sweep the Macross and prove that we are the better men."

Several squads break away from the defense of the Zamouth Garr; they swarm towards the Macross, seeking to blast apart its defenses and ensure that the civilians inside remain unharmed. Bullets lance along the sides; beamfire rains down from above, and beam sabers are drawn to deal with incoming Super-Valkyrie and Destroid defenders in perfect synchronicity. The Crossbone Vanguard means *business*.

"That's right," Vindel mockingly, predatorily coos as Zweizergain folds its arms over its chest and begins to circle almost lazily around the Strayed. "Fight until your fists bleed--until your bones shatter!" Bare remnants of his exhultation still linger in his voice, lending an entirely out of place lilt to his words.

The Strayed's grenade launcher and Zweizergain flicker simultaneously; when the explosive is actually /launched/, Zweizergain vanishes.

This should pretty much be expected, by now.

"Your resolve is the anvil upon which I'll break you," Vindel lowly states; Zweizergain has found a new place behind R's Armored Core. Unfolding its arms, its empty left hand shoots for the Strayed's head a second time; this time, this time, he only wants - only /needs/ - to get a brief hold on the other machine.

Provided that he /gets/ it, the next thing he'll do is hurl the Armored Core towards the PLANT itself, and afterwards he'll raise Zweizergain's blade just to rest it gingerly across its shoulders.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Macua Huitl transmits, "I'm still in good condtion whats the status of your frame it's hard to tell visually from here."

The Brynhildr sweeps across the top of the Zamouth, reaching the end of its attack run; Aki turns to size up the battlefield, just in time to see the Macross coming in both at speed and upside-down relative to her position.

And boy there sure are a lot of guns pointed right at her general position.

"A-ah, ah, ah, sir gimme a break don't fire that yet /siiiir/--"

As the Macross opens fire on the enemy battleship Aki flings her mech to one side, thrusters bursting to send her wildly careening out of incoming fire's way. Her spear repeatedly stabs at the hull of the ship she's on as she travels, each strike activating the spear with a 'ka-chunk' to leave behind a primed canister of plasma, spinning amicably just above the most likely looking break points of the Zamouth's shell.

When the first of the missiles from the Macross impacts against the side of the craft, it doesn't /just/ impact - the heat and explosion detonate one of the canisters, which chains onto another, and another.

The force of the blast sends Aki's machine clear of the side of the ship; she pirouettes madly in midspace, trying to cope with the recoil and slamming hard into a panel of the Macross.

...says Aki over the radio as, in the wake of her little gift, the broadside of the Zamouth explodes in a violent chain reaction.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Alina Luddite transmits, "Mayet is still functional."

Katina's Red Gespesnt Mk IV promptly gets shot nearly to hell, half of its systems getting completely wrecked by the last barrage from Irom Mask's Scout Squad, and the Gespenst collapses, much to Katina's dismay, "No, NO, NO!! GET UP!! DON'T YOU DARE SHUT DOWN!!!"

She growls, and within the confines of her cockpit she screams out, "RUSSEEEEEEEEELL!!!!!!!!!" Because venting at him always makes her feel better. She doesn't expect him to show up, but it makes her feel better.

The co-ordinated and disciplined units of the Crossbone Vanguard work with clarity, focus, and purpose.

To the pilot of the wounded Jinx, they may as well have handed her their playbook.

Weaving and spinning through the scout team's beamfire and sabre swings, Eight slips through holes and gaps in their firing patterns, evading them as if they weren't even there. But just as she's about to leave the mobile suits behind, the orders come in.

As if on automatic, the GNXII turns back to the scout team, and its four eyes focus on the one hefting the luminescent flag. With a menacing red *flash*, the Jinx suddently charges back towards the mobile suits, a Beam Sabre drawn from a hidden sheath. With a sudden, almost inexplicable fury, the Federation grunt starts tearing into the nearest suit with a flag, then the next, and then the next, looking to hunt down the leaders like an enraged beast!

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Macua Huitl transmits, "Alina pull back, you taken a good bit of damage and we don't have much in the way of materials to aid in the repair of your machine."

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Alina Luddite hesitates for a moment, then says, "Copy. Withdrawing from the combat area."

<Radio: G - A-LAWS Secure> Vier Winnaar transmits, "The Defenders are in bad shape. I have to retreat."

This has become a battle between two women who have in some way had interaction with mechanical substitutes. One a gynoid, the other forced into a similar life through extensive modification... and in many ways they feel what their machines are going through as well, right now.

Yue's breath is haggard and unstable as she stares towards the R-Eins, the Tesla drives of the Ophanim's wings kicking into full gear again as she tries to outgun the blast, but the throbbing in her head pulsates wildly and interferes with the controls. She coughs further, in sheer agony for a moment as she senses the incoming blast from the Graviton Cannon.

The Ophanim curls its wings by instinct as Yue does everything she can to try to absorb the hit, bracing for impact--

And as the gravity warps around her, purplish-black mottled and perforated energy corrupting the Ophanim as the cannon lances through, deflected wherever it can, however it can through the Ophanim's Gundanium armor, Yue thinks to herself how much more -intense- the shock is. She gags at one point and coughs aloud as her brain starts to garble on her, her stomach twisting in knots as she struggles to not throw up.

Out of the corner of her eye, though, she sees the Zweizergain make another move against the PLANT. No -- if she moves against Vindel now, Lethe will surely finish her off. But... but if he's allowed to move on the colony itself, many more will surely be lost. ... she has to do it!

"Vindel Mauser...! You forgot one detail..." she hisses through bloodied lips as she summons what little energy the spent mobile suit has left, drawing recesses of power into the Buster Rifle and loading up for a second blast at maximum power. Why does every battle drop down to a fight to the near-death with her?

The Zweizergain's many forms flood through her mind and serve to confuse her, as she feels herself doubting which one is real, and which one is an illusion... and yet, she focuses, and confirms it for herself. That one. That one feels right. She can feel the patterns -- subconsciously, as much as consciously and through the Ophanim's predictive targetting systems.

"One small detail... and that is..." Yue mutters as she snaps through the loops, locking on with careful and calculated detail. She lifts her chin up and mutters, "No matter how oppressed we may become, no matter how battered, beaten, distracted... you cannot ever hope to snuff our drive out entirely."

The Buster Rifle hisses again, pulling triple-duty as it's summoned for one final blast that runs a crack straight through its midst and threatens to completely dismantle it at the component level. The now-familiar golden beam screams out loud, engulfing the smaller winged machine in size, dancing webs of lightning coursing throughout its girth.

"Now retreat! You won't accomplish anything today...!"

Unlike her two companions, Lin has no newtype powers, and is thus oblivious to the anguish that their attacks had caused. In fact, her only concentration had been on keeping herself alive. For her first time out flying the Orbital Frame, she certainly had done surprisingly well. The white-haired woman lifts her hands from the controls, looking at the pulsing blue in her arms that seems to echo the heartbeat of the machine. Then, those cold eyes look out towards the retreating enemy, "I will improve. Trust me." It's a promise to herself - to become a better pilot, and get back to being someone closer to the person she'd lost those many months ago.

"Status report." << Shields holding at fifty percent. Some armor damage. Weapons systems still operational.>> With a nod of her head, the framerunner cracks the helmet of her flight suit, taking a deep breath of the recycled air within the cockpit. The fact is, it /felt/ more fresh than the air inside her suit. Those blue eyes scan towards the battle still raging, although they lack some of their normal emotion. "Mayet is still functional." She reports, but the response is one that surprises her. A call to withdraw? Well, at the very least Macua's reasoning holds true. "Copy. Withdrawing from the combat area."

As she switches the radio transmission to 'off', Lin places her hands back onto the controls. "Alright, Amit. set a course back to the Argama. Let's try not to draw any more Crusader attention for the time being." Oh, Lin. How oblivious she is to just how much Crusader attention she's managed to draw tonight.

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Yue Rohay transmits, "Kh... I suppose this isn't like how it was back then..."

The Altairlion looks left, right, up and down in quick succession as it about-faces after blasting past the Zamouth Garr, G-Accelerator coils still cooling down from the last assault, perhaps mimicking the actions being taken in the cockpit by its pilot, whose heart rate has probably been somewhere in the 200BPM range since this tango /started/, and is started to feel just a little bit haggard.

"Ibis! Two marks at two-ten!" yells Tsugumi, who is /not at all/ ready for the stressful job of being the copilot of one of the fastest god damned things ever made, and is failing utterly at her attempts to keep the target data coming cleanly. Auburn hair matted to her head with sweat, she looks nervously at the high-powered radar screen and just feels the urge to... freeze. She feels so powerless.

The problem of being a support character.

Luckily, Ibis has the /god damned slack/ picked up, and the Altairlion jukes and sways from side to side on bright green jets of fire, propelling itself backwards away from the Den'An Zons as they press the attack, the silver Armored Module darting inbetween beam fire and saber swing, spraying each of them in the face with cannon fire, then twisting back into Cruise Configuration and blasting off at maximum throttle, which throws the inhabitants of the craft back into their seats rather uncomfortably as the A-LAWS war machine speeds away from the Zamouth Garr.

And it cuts a bloody, explosion-filled swathe through the DC forces once again, traversing a ridiculous distance in a ridiculously tiny timeframe as it scythes through the batttlefield towards the standard-bearing Den'An Zons, loosing 90mm Gravity Guidance cannon rounds at absolutely everything in sight, not waiting to see if she's actually scoring any hits. Just throwing the throttle wide open and holding down the trigger.

After the defeat of the Qareen, Quatre leans heavily over his console, sweating up a storm. Though it might not have seen like much on the outside, he'd had a hell of a time keeping up with the Qareen's Sword Breakers. And that additional assault from the Zwei had really caused the Mercurius to take a beating. Using just the main center screen, the youngster turns his machine about and bursts straight for the hangar-entrance to the colony. If the Divine Crusaders won, perhaps he'd be able to strike from within. Otherwise... well, it's best to get this thing repaired as soon as possible!

The NEXT was taken a hold of; R was getting silently tired of this, however though he tried to avoid the hand of fate, he couldn't manage it.

Soon the white mech was thrown across space itself, tumbling out of control. The only thing R could do, which was dangerous for himself; but safe for those of PLANT; was shut off his primal armor.

He tried to use his thrusters to direct away from the colony, but there wasn't much he could do on that. If he impacted the colony..

<<"..no..">> He whispered.

Then giving everything he had, he used his thrusters to try to correct himself, attempt to redirect himself; more correctly, in the end by the sheer force, damage taken, and path of correction. R about nearly destroyed himself and only a part, a small part, of the NEXT skimmed the colony itself.

However by all that work to protect one thing, he had him now floating in the darkness of space.

R isn't left floating around for very long, though; the Valhawk zips back up, converting to Close Combat Mode as it approaches the NEXT, and takes surprisingly gentle hold of the machine.

"We gotcha, R," Kazuma transmits at very close range. And with the Raven and his NEXT now in tow, he heads for the Valstork by the most direct route available that won't go through something solid ...

<Radio: B - Katharon Secure> Yue Rohay transmits, "Keep going. I'm going to pull out... somehow..."

There's half a leg, one arm, and most of the torso intact. By rights, the R-Ein should be disabled, if not totally destroyed-- and yet, it continues to function. It functions long enough to fire that one hellacious shot from the Graviton Cannon, the weapon sputtering with sparks and arcs of electricity as it overloads from the heat generated from the proximity to the buster rifle's beam.

Lethe's holding on for dear life when it moves-- when Yue flees, chasing after the Zweizergain instead of the crippled R-Ein. Throwing everything she has into the engine, the dismembered Personal Trooper releases the equally-thrashed Graviton Cannon and makes one last lunge after the Ophanim.

The timing has to be perfect.

She can't cross into the Colonel's path. She can't let Yue catch her with that buster rifle again. She can't let the R-Ein give out. With a lot of things left on her plate, the gynoid manages to coax the controls into pulling out one of the two bladed tonfa afforded to the mass production-type machine and holding it as tightly as the fingers can still manage.

The mangled machine strikes once with an upward-hooking blow. Twice with a downward thrust from the blunt end. A third time with an outward slash, the tonfa being allowed to spin forward in the R-Ein's grasp. The fourth, Lethe red-lines the Personal Trooper's battered engine, the whole machine threatening to rattle right off it's inner frame, as she tries to stab the blade tonfa into the Ophanim-- and leave it right in place.

The Dan'en Zons are methodical, effcient, and driven with purposes.

But at every step they hounded, harrassed and dogged by VF-1 Valkyries. Their fighting becoming fiercer and more deadly as the enemy mobile suits draw clsoer to the Macross.

Deep isnide the Macross, within the large heavy shelters where hte sounds of battle are only dimly recieved, two children hudle up next to their mother and father. "Oh don't worry kids." the father says gently. "Captain Global has never let us down before. Besides, the Macross is our home, we can't abandon it if things any more now then we could on the trip home from Earth."

The pilots of the Macross fight to defend the ship with a ferocity rarely seen in pilot protecting a strictly military vessel. To protect friends and family while the Macross' pin point barriers slide across it's hull to absourb greater impacts.

"Enemy command vessel within range." Misa Hayase replies cooly.

Captain Global nods once in his seat and adjusts his hat. "Full throttle. Pin point barriers into position."

"Yes sir!" Misa replies and pushes up the sliders on her controll panel. The entire Macross shifts around like a prize boxer shifting it's weight in slow motion. The former assault landing ship Deadalus raises up on it's docking collar arm, the front end of the ship glowing blue white.

Deadalus...attack!" Misa whispers.

THe Macross fires it's thrusters as it's upper body shifts. The half kilometer of /gigantic battleship fist/ slams forward at the Zamouth Garr, threatening to impact it with enough force to outright pierce the hull of the other vessel.

No good; no good! The ship is just too large to efficiently dodge Aki's machine; her spear comes slamming down again and again, blowing more and more holes in the already-battered-looking Zamouth Garr. A few Den'an Zons come in to chase her away, but by the time she's done her work, ripping a point open in the shell that's actually taking a bit of time to close, Aki's already all the way across the field on the Macross.

Behind his mask, Iron Mask frowns.

He frowns even deeper as Eight begins to take apart one of his squadrons with lightning ease. The newtypes were troublesome...just as he suspected. Iron Mask's eyes flash behind his mask as his head tips upwards, gesturing to the side to Captain Pieter. "Pieter. The pilot of that machine...I want it destroyed."

Pieter swallows hurriedly, subconsciously inching away from Iron Mask. Outside, Eight's machine rips apart the first flagged suit, but as soon as one is down, a new Den'an Zon's flag sprouts to life, making hunting them all down...well, nearly impossible. Still, it's a step in the right direction. "Sir?"

"I believe it is a Newtype, Pieter." Iron Mask replies. "I don't know if it's a true Newtype or not, but it doesn't matter. It's enough. There's another one on this field...I can feel it, somewhere. I cannot pinpoint where, but I can feel it...clawing at the shores of my mind, a crab attempting to disturb the patterns in the sand I have drawn."

Pieter simply nods. He had no idea what that meant, but it's always better to nod like he understood his commander. Iron Mask was not...an understanding man.

To say the least. Not after Theo Fairchild...

Iron Mask returns his attention to the field just as Ibis Douglas cuts a bloody, explosive-filled swath through the Crossbone Vanguard forces. She blitzes through them, cutting away from the Zamouth Garr as fast as possible and plowing through the black and star-specked night. She cuts towards the colony, and Iron Mask frowns...deeper. This was becoming costly. Very, very costly.

OH SHIT DAEDALUS ATTACK

Iron Mask does not even lose his cool. His eyes flash as the Macross comes plowing towards him; he holds his fingers to the side, gesturing to Pieter calmly. "Captain. Evasive maneuvers, immediately."

The Zamouth Garr turns. It wheels to the side, the massive fist of the Macross sweeping forth towards the top of the Zamouth Garr and swiping across it destructively; its very touch tears a whole chunk of metal free from the Divine Crusader ship, though the Zamouth Garr is not sunk. No, on the contrary.

It is in range.

"Fire all cannons," Iron Mask replies camly, raising his hand and leveling it forward. The forward guns begin firing once more, under the massive arm of the Macross for the offensive mobile suits to clear the Valkyries from its form; then Iron Mask says what might be the most insane thing anyone has ever spoken in the direction of the Macross.

Iron Mask turns to stare at Captain Pieter. Pieter trembles, stepping backwards. "M-my lord Ronah?"

Iron Mask opens his mouth behind his mask.

"Take us to ramming speed."

"Plow the prow through the SDF-1. Now."

Macua Huitl is going to stay behind and make sure Vier and Alina can get clear, it could be very clear who the real danger. Suriel is down for the moment, that's good but she can't help but think about the people who did that to him. She turns her attention to the machine that attact her eariler she knows he may very well attempt to gun the others down. She narrowes her eyes and does the best thing she can think of to get Vindel Mauser's attention.

"GUNDAM FIGHTER VINDEL MAUSER! I AM COMMING FOR YOU!"

Since he's a Gundam fighter or at the least is on their level. But so far as she knows he's not got a nation to fight for just yet. But she does come at him rapidly moving into attack but ahead of that comes her funnels striking out across the void for him.

Aki's mech rolls across the top of the Macross as she rebounds from her collision, picking up speed again to lift off and clear of the flagship - just in time to get a Forward Cannon right to the goddamn face.

"Agh--!" she yelps, her machine blasted backwards in a torrent of fire, tearing at the machine's light armor - then with an angry noise she's raised her spear straight into the path of the fire, the head of it reigniting.

Almost immediately the beam shears in two, torn asunder by the pulsing plasma blade - and with a roar, the Brynhildr accelerates into the gap created by the 'v' of the backwash, repeatedly blasting her way straight up the path of the strike to converge, at a high and angry speed, on the main turrets of the Zamouth.

With a raw yell, she drives the spear straight into and through the barrels of the turret, trying to bring the twisting and unstably strong blade to bear on the main firepower of the enemy ship.

It's not like the Altairlion looks like a turbo-sexy A-Wing in cruise configuration or anything, but I'm /just sayin'/.

"The rear stabiliser's just about had it! Tsugumi, can't you do anything about it?" yells Ibis over the roar of the twin tesla drives, an incessant droning whine that they /really/ need to work on fixing, because holy hot damn is that distracting. The flustered brunette in the back seat doesn't quite know what to do, staring blankly at the diagnostic display in front of her, watching her breath fog on the visor of her helmet.

She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't ready for /war/. Suddenly, all of Ibis' past insecurities and failures look just a little bit more understandable.

"God /damn/ it!" snaps the redhead, jamming the yoke to one side and hurling the Altairlion out of the way of an otherwise-lethal beam cannon blast. The wreckage dotting the battlefield is not so lucky, and a series of minor explosions fill the sparkling starscape as the beam punches through loose fuel tanks and ammunition stores and god knows what else.

"Tsugumi, snap out of it! Hey!" Ibis' voice is distant and far away over the patchy, rough helmet mic, and does nothing to snap her best friend and confidant out of her foggy daze.

The Altairlion briefly jostles for position with one of the few remanining Den'An Zons that hasn't been wrecked by judicious missile spam this whole fight, slamming a bulky silver wing into it with enough force to tear the head clean off, the A-LAWS pilot's eyes still full of fire. "God, fine, I'll handle this myself!" she shouts, as the G-Accelerator coils groan and warm up for another attack.

The best part about rail-based weapons is sniping from stupid distances away.

Ibis shares this joy with the beleaguered Zamouth Garr.

Trying to hit a Mobile Suit with a ship-mounted cannon?

Silly Captain. Trick shots are for mecha!

Evading the battleship's main cannons, the GNXIII looks at the thinned ranks of the Crossbone's leadership, and then glances back to the warship. So... the one in charge was... upset? Annoyed? ... Angry?

Clearly, it was time to put an end to this madness, as the warship was on a collision course with the Macross. Diving straight for the battleship again, and tossing the now-discharged saber aside, Eight readies her suit's bazooka once again, and takes aim at the warship.

Not bothering with a single, carefully-aimed shot, Eigth tears into the Zamouth with a salvo of bazooka shells, racking shot after shot until the magazine is emptied. But the shots aren't /completely/ wild... Aiming along the topside of the warship, she tries to aim for the for that glowing soul... Maybe a lucky shot could end this all, right now!

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "..argh.. headache.. hey Yu.. I heard you were trying to steal a ship to come save me.."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "Shut up you oaf and get back to earth so I can give you a good talking to!"

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "Hehe-- once I think I catch a cat-nap and the guys on the Dropship get to landing on this monster-- and then bitch me out for mistreatment of a NEXT."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "Then you can yell at me all you want."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu merfs, "Deal."

The Deadalus attack rebounds off the Zamouth Garr, teh smaller ship sliding underneath the Macross' arm. "We missed!" Claudia reports. "Only minimal damage to the enemy ship!"

Vanessa cuts in. "enemy ship's drives are powering up, thy're turning in towards us!" She nearly panics. "Pinpoint barriers!" Global shouts. The glowing disks of energy converge on the Macross hull, directly infront of the Zamouth Garr, blunting the force of it's impact against the hull, but at the same time, overloading hte barriers into shutting off to prevent a dangerous power failure. The Zamouth Garr's prow scraping along the Macross super-carbon hull armor like gigantic nails across a solar sized chalk board.

"Misa! Counter attack!" Global shouts over the noise. "Yes sir!" she changes the position of her hands on the controls and the last flickers of PPB energy transfers across the ship and the Macross counter attacks.

The massive ship shifts it's weight again and swings, not with the Deadalus.

With the Prometheus. The aircraft carrier attached as the Macross' left arm, attempting to punch the the Zamouth Garr directly away from the ship's body.

The problem with calling out Vindel Mauser is that there are a /lot of goddamn Vindel Mausers/ right now.

MOMENTS AGO

"You misunderstand me, Ms. Rohay," the Lord of War calmly transmits as Zweizergain turns towards the Ophanim. "But that's fine; I've accomplished what I set out to, today, and that's all I could ask for."

One Zweizergain becomes two as the Ophanim's Buster Rifle begins to crack. A sheath of raw, throbbing gray light springs up around the machine, casting shadows across its entire figure.

"You're wasting your breath, anyway; do you think I'm afraid of your determination? Your willpower? That I'll flee from your swagger and puffed chest? Hnh."

Two becomes four; four becomes eight; eight, sixteen; sixteen, thirty-two...

"Your bravado would be an amazing weapon; if only you knew how to harness it."

... five hundred Zweizergains become a thousand, each glowing hatefully red beneath its glimmering aura.

NOW

So, yeah, there are a lot of Zweizergains.

The upshot is that the Amazon's singular funnel shot actually slices clean through like five Zweizergains; more importantly, the Ophanim's buster rifle actually cuts a tunnel of golden destruction through the one man army corps. The rest of the images shimmer somewhat unstably as the Buster Rifle scythes through their ranks, stabilizing only once its purifying light has wavered into non-existence.

"Yes--yes!" he exhults as the Zweizergain Army slowly crosses their collective arms over their collective chests. "Come at me! Break yourselves against me and be reborn!"

The moment Zweizergains' arms draw taught against their bodies, they begin to fall in towards the Ophanim and Amazon both, an army--no, a /legion/ of Vindel Mauser's own making all united in achieving one simple, destructive aim:

The purging of Yue Rohay and Macua Huitl's weaknesses through the purifying fires of unmaking.

"Or fail," he continues as the two red clouds gather abouta s densely as they can around their respective mobile suits, "and return to dust."

Twinned explosions brighten the black void for a horrible instant when the Zweizergain Army detonates itself en masse; it's as if /every single one/ of the duplicates suffered a catastrophic engine failure at the exact same time and furthermore waited to do so until they were as close to the Amazon and Ophanim as they could get.

Hopefully, the two pilots' reflexes, combined with the high performance of their machines will be sufficient to save them from the onslaught.

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "Maybe we could even have dinner after you're done yelling."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "Sure, if you are paying."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "If I offer, I pay."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> Yu Zhi Wu transmits, "Good."

<Radio: A - Trailer Chat> R transmits, "Now-- if you excuse me.. I am being directed to a bed cause apparently, I am walking like I am drunk."

The spear blade bounds off the armor as a Den'an Zon lands behind Aki to chase her away; the armor of the Zamouth Garr, even as beaten as it is, is still strangely tough. Still, it's starting to show the wear of battle, that's for sure; the holes, the floating corpses, the shrapnel hanging around it held by gravity...

...added to be Ibis 'A-WING' Douglas, as she fires her railguns into the ship again. Once more, it shakes itself to the core, staff officers and soldiers clutching the rails and the sides of the ship and whatever they can get their hands on as they shudder from force.

"Incoming!" Captain Pieter screams, pointing forward at Eight's Jinx. "Covering fire, immediately!" The gunners in their turrets swing about; lasers fill the air, detonating the bazooka shots harmlessly as they come in towards the Zamouth Garr. The explosions rock the ship once more, and Pieter swears. "They're getting too close to us! Why haven't we taken them down? What are our defense squads *doing*?"

The Den'an Zons are, specifically, trying their best to hold off the almighty Macross's home defense ships. Being *in melee with the god damned Macross* was not at all smart, especially if you didn't have a *transforming ship*. But Iron Mask wasn't the kind of person who cared for things like 'wise'.

He who dared, won.

"Prepare the main cannons," Iron Mask declares, "One fnal shot. We will drain our batteries as close to nothing as we can, for the sake of destroying the Macross and its allies. While we are in melee with the SDF-1, we will release all the power that we have...all across the field."

"Yes, my lord." Pieter bows. Iron Mask nods, turning back to the window as the windows opaque. Every single gun on the Zamouth Garr suddenly blazes to life; every, single, gun flares with a single surge of power as the Zamouth Garr's energy reserves run as low as they safely can, an action that would leave it next to hopeless except for its machine guns. From that flash of light, the beams lance out once more; they flash across the field for a final shot, leaving the Zamouth Garr as close to hopeless in space as it possibly could be.

They would not get a better chance.

But this could also spell their defeat.

The Ophanim is just out of energy at this point -- it doesn't have the resources to do any extended manuevers. It was a foolish thing to commit herself to that last massive attack against Vindel, especially when operating without a battleship as a secure retreat point, but... the colony.

Gotta /save the colony/. She so predictable.

What she does have, though, is the beam saber. Yue eyes Lethe's movements as they come, bringing the tonfa to the saber's swipe and timing it such to parry and keep the blades away with her own energy sword.

"Stop this... why would you willingly march to kill so many?" Yue tries, voice a few notches away from pleading, but her expression steels a little as she knows she has to move onward. "Feel it out. Hear your heart! Surely you haven't discarded it!" Oh, Yue, you are SO BAD at realizing you're fighting robots.

Well. Robots inside robots anyway.

Her attempt to strike back is suddenly interrupted as the Zweizergain -- well, gigantic amounts of Zweizergains, anyway -- catch up on her. It's too much -- focus, look for an opening--

Too late.

The rest of the Zweizergains explode with a fury that could certainly be called catastrophic, the damage just racing through and overloading and exhausting straight the Gundanium build of the mobile suit and sending fierce jolts to Yue's mind and straight-up incapacitating her.

And as the pilot falls to her side, her last few moments of consciousness thinking momentarily to how she'll overcome this seemingly insurmountable hurdle... the Ophanim continues to get slammed like a rag doll, thrown ever which way, legs and arms bereft of armor and starting to severely fall apart and wings shredded to pieces as the liquid metal starts to come apart at its molecular seams.

"I'm..." Yue mutters to a blank monitor, as her mind fails to connect to it, and then she passes out.

And with it, the Ophanim stops moving, floating helplessly in sorry state within the battlefield.

Intercepted. The damn gunners are getting bett--

The Jinx's pilot's thoughts are cut off, as the world turns white. A sudden, unpredicted Beam Cannon shot strikes her just off of center, incinerating the suit's armor, and blasting away large chunks of the framework. Spinning out of control, the shattered mobile suit spins away, helplessly adrift as the pilot passes out from the shock...

Tsugumi Takakura watches helplessly as the Zamouth Garr's angular, villainous form in the distance glistens once, menacingly, heralding soon the arrival of high-energy ship-to-ship beam weapons. She didn't want it to end like this, cramped, sore, scared, staring blankly at a screen that shows a mostly-red wireframe diagram of the Altairlion, the culmination of her life's work, waiting for it to end.

She has forgotten who the fuck is in the pilot's seat.

The Altairlion's eyes gleam burning green in the moments before the Zamouth Garr's broadside reaches it, and it makes one last transformation for the battle, arms and legs whirling out of the cruise-form in a desperate final gamble, twin tesla drive hurling it /directly/ towards the battleship even as it finishes transforming, the time left before impact measurable in fractions of a second.

It's all the time Ibis needs.

One silver manipulator hand lashes out to the side, grabbing hold of the still, floating form of a shattered Den'an Zon, beam flag still burning brightly from the emitter on its back. The emitter, don'tcha know, emits an I-Field. A god damned I-Field flag. This shit is bananas. Ibis rips the emitter from the Den'an Zon's back and basically gets Macguyver with it, and in the last, /last/ fraction of a fraction of a second before the beam fire hits...

...there's juuuuust enough of interference from that spasming I-Field to keep it from vaporizing the Altairlion entirely.

Minovsky Physics: A Bitch Of A Thing.



Ibis Douglas gasps long and hard for breath as everything fades back from white, still alive, still in a (barely) functioning vehicle and looking Smokin' Sick Stylish as the Altairlion limps away from the scene of the fight, burning away as fast as possible because there is basically no way it's going to survive so much as a stray sneeze.

It also begins emitting the emergency transponder and, a few moments later, sails away to safety carrying the battered, smashed-up form of Eight Murasame's GN-XIII over one shoulder, and the Not The Wing Gundam We Swear Ophanim over the other.

The copilot faints. She is /so/ not cut out for this.

Macua Huitl knows Vindel is very strong, she knows he can fight Domon to a standstill. She's not even sure what would happen if Vindel and his Zweizergain fought Folka and his god machine. Other than the carnage that would result but such thoughts do not last very long. She knows everyone is dropping the feds are being forced back and the ZAFT defenders are not fairing too well either. Without warning Zweizergain does something amazing.

Which makes her own Spear Dance seem like nothing. She sees the army of Zweizergains before her she recalls her funnels back and starts to open up her mind now she tries to finds where the real one is but to her shock the clone army have physical mass. They come in and she struck Macua does not counter attack normal she opens up with the funnels attempting to shoot down the clones, she's got a bad feeling about these things one gets past her and explodes, then another and another. She can't stop them all but when the explosion settles and the light of them fades. The Amazon CI Gundam hovers there arms up in a cross protecting the cockpit but she's not fallen. She has survived what Vindel has sent at her. On some level she knows she can not carry the day in all likelihood but she will not yield she can not back down. Her newtype senses are still reeling from earlier but with the departure of Suriel she can handle her self a bit better now Her trace had been entirely lit up but shes still seemingly in the fight, as the suit returns to normal.

"I haven't fallen yet Vindel Mauser. You are one of the few I have met who words are backed up what I can do. You are more than fit to see what I have to show you."

"KISSSSHHHHHHHINNNNN KKKKKKKKEEEEEEEENNNN!!!!"

Macua disengages several locks on the Amazon's performance and there's a surge of energy visible over the machine as she grabs the spear which has remained unused for the entire battle, the weapon is clearly a Balmarian in at least its inspiration given how it unpacks and Macua spins it once while the surge starts to build up about her machine still. There come times in a martial artist development which can push them further or break them. Some break, some do not. In Macua case she doe not break shes pushed father against a foe whose out of her league shes not running. The Amazon Gundam now breaks into motion its fast its blurring and what seem to be three copies of the machine appear, its not as impressive as Vindels but it might still be unexpected. Two seem to come at Vindel and start attacking him. Lethe would also find they are now also under attack as well.

Macua continues her attack only one is real but with how illusions and the real Amazon CI is moving about. As both would be taking actual strikes and she pulls back the spear collapses and the Geist blow comes on line with both of the machines hands. The energy fields flare up and Macua lets out a shout. She dives for Lethe first her attacks coming so fast they blur, punches, kicks, attempting to pick out weak points in her machine exploited them. Her final strike is a kick which she attempts to use to launch her self off at Vindel.

Vindels machine is a mostly unknown theres only one machine that even looks sort of like it. Which us pretty much unknown her self she strikes again and again rapidly striking for the mide4ction of the super robot and doesnt let up shell star to throw several kicks in there and follow it up with a full out Geist blow strike aimed right for the machines head. IF she manages to grasp it shell drive her machines knee into the other machines center of mass before she pulls back, the machines oiptics flaring up bright green and still bleeding power from driving its reactor to its limit to keep up with the motion date she was giving it. But would it be enough?

Iron Mask looks on at the destruction his gambit has caused; he closes his hand into a fist, nodding at Pieter. Pieter breathes a sigh of relief as the ship backs away from the Macross, exhaling from sheer fear. That was too close for comfort, Pieter thinks; Carozzo might be a genius, but sitting in the chair alongside him was an entirely different matter.

The Den'an Zons swarm into the mothership; with one of the rail launchers destroyed by Aki, and heavy damage sustained from the rest of the EFA forces, the Den'an Zons are forced to dock one by one, making the process extremely slow.

"Sir, if we allow the Shadow Mirrors to destroy the colony, what support we may gain from this fight-"

Iron Mask shakes his head. "We will not. Fire a warning shot at the Zweizergain; right across his bow. We will make certain that the Shadow Mirrors know that we still have enough to continue...if *they* wish to continue their battle against the colony, they will need to go through us."

"Yes, my lord." Pieter salutes. "Fire a shot at the Zweirzergain!"

One of the smaller guns of the Zamouth Garr whirrs around, pointing squarely at the Zweirzergain. The blast streaks forth, a very clear warning - Don't Destroy The Colony. And then, the massive purple wedge-ship begins its retreat, as if it had never been there at all.

The message is clear.

Whoever these mysterious aggressors are, they are *not* messing around.

The saber collides with the tonfa. With each strike, with each deflection of the blade, the R-Eins seems to try even /harder/ to land the next blow, but all is for naught. And the pilot calls out to her, tries to beseech her human heart to figure out why she's doing what she's doing. For Lethe Rusina, the matter is incredibly simple, her reply filled with bursts of static and the dull warping noise of stray electrical arcs. "Following the orders of my leader is the purpose of my life!"

The last parry puts the R-Ein at a disadvantage; the Personal Trooper's arm goes wide, and the unbalanced mass-- with minimal control of it's own propulsion-- is sent tumbling backward, prime for a counterattack. For a moment, her expression shifts... and it's in a manner that she doesn't even realize: Irritation.

And then, Vindel Mauser.

The machines caught in a devistating web of explosions, Lethe is able to get the R-Ein to stop spinning through the darkness of space and get it to hold /steady/-- though that is a relative term in and of itself. The engine is practically shot, energy levels running on fumes, and chunks of armor and frame are breaking away with each passing moment. It's also the first time she's ever been able to witness Code Kirin, personally.

There's a great many weak points to choose from when it comes to the current state of the R-Ein-- the holes in the torso and three out of four limbs being torn off does do that. Lethe's hands roll forward a bit before she pulls back on both sticks with a liberal amount of force-- and as the blows come raining in, the wreckage that is the remaining part of the right leg is knocked free. The torn and bent pauldron of the left shoulder is knocked off, and even one of the two wing-pod antennae mounted on the sides of the head catch the very edge of a blow...

... but it still doesn't take a hit to the center mass. Every punch or kick or deft strike aimed for it just can't find purchase, instead contributing to the lack-luster speed being built up from momentum. The final strike, the strike that helps her kick-- and kick off in the Colonel's direction-- is met with the open palm of the R-Eins, the hand crumbling under the pressure of the kick and smashing back into the forearm.

Macua goes for the Zweizergain. "Colonel--"

Lethe turns the crippled R-Eins, but she doesn't get far, and-- what's going to happen next?!! ... Like warning shots?!!

SOME TIME AGO

"If we do this," Vindel cautions the man in the metal mask, "we'll have to do it right--but you understand that. We--"

"Say no more," the hologram cuts in, holding up hand. "Respectfully, of course; it's just that I do indeed understand. Just trust me; as long as your end is taken care of, I'll carry mine."

"Hnh. Fair enough," Vindel exhales. "It's a shame, really; we've been unable to get our hands on N-Jammer Cancellers for some time, now..."

NOW

For the Zweizergain and Amazon, the next several seconds unfold on a scale of minutes, days, years, an eternity; for those not wrapped up in their conflict, the two machines are just coloured blurs clashing at one another in passing before retreating to their respective places in space.

When the Amazon CI multiples, Zweizergain replies in kind; punches meet kicks meet spears meet forearms meet the terrible power of the Geist Blow. One by one, an Amazon duplicate and a Zweizergain image each reach a stalemate as the one /real/ Amazon's fists begin to glow. Zweizergain's cockpit is bathed in red warning lights due to the readings coming from the Amazon's fists; the Shadow Mirror machine pulls a few feet back and drops its fists.

"'Kishin Ken'," Vindel remarks, a smile crosing his lips. "I appreciate the attempt, but don't fool yourself, girl: you are /nothing/ like them."

The Zweizergein's /own/ 'Geist' system engages, bringing with it a sanguine glow from the strange machinery peeking through its damaged armour; in an instant, the Zweizergain's duplicates are gone and the true machine simply /is/ behind the R-Eins, which it lays a firm hand upon.

"Come, W-18; it's--"

Vulcan fire rakes across Zweizergain's back, peeling a few of its uppermost layer of armour clean off; Vindel's smile widens a touch.

"--time to /leave/."

The Shadow Mirror machine turns its head to level its glowing gaze upon the Zamuth Garr for a brief moment before it and the R-Eins both become rippling aberrations in the middle of the void.

Soon, they become nothing at all, winking out of existence and leaving nothing more than a lingering red tinge to the space they occupied.

Macua Huitl unaware of the agreement with Vindel and the mysterious attackers? Macus is more focused on staying alive. She knows she's spent all she's had and that attack she's expecting Vindel and in his wingman are going to finish him. As the battle contiunes she ends up just abotu out oif it bracing for the end but? She's notand some words from Vindel. She knows it's not the race she admires. It's a Folka whom she admires and knows the Shura will try to destroy her, and one already has. Damaged as she is her machine turns and flees after Alina and totally not a certain blonde Arab.