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Zek THE INDEX primarily takes place on one of several locales around Neptune in the so-called 'Origin System,' and is hosted by a capitalist televangelist by the name of Nef Anyo. According to the myriad broadcasts, he claims that having faith in 'the Void' and risking huge amounts of money on Index bouts is a sure-fire way to get rich.

Riiiight.

Tonight is a special match, though. Rather than the usual four-versus-four point-collecting arena-style bout, the Index has been setup for a very special occasion: an all-comers bout against a real live Tenno, dug up by Corpus recovery teams and brought here to make someone very, very rich.

THE ARENA is an enormous dome on the side of a mined-out asteroid, filled with replicas of terrestrial plant-life and sleek, hardened Corpus structures in snowy white. Speaking of snow, it's just below freezing, with snow spread all across the tops of ten-to-thirty-foot cliffs, connected by catwalks, ramps, and ziplines. A frozen river going nowhere fills the bottom of the ravine that splits the arena in two, with caves cut into the lower cliffs by the shore.

Competitors are delivered by elevator platform to the top of the cliffs, surrounded by waist-high walls outside one of the structures built at the top. Hovering cameras and viewscreens float high above. A geometric shape in black and white appears on the monitors, and a somewhat high, excited voice echoes in the space. The geometric shape on the monitors pulses with each word.

"This is The Index! I'm Cephalon Sark, your unbiased host! We have a very special bout for you tonight: a winner-take-all endurance match against none other than one of the Betrayers themselves!"

The roof of the nearby building slides open. A pair of elegant golden capsules ascends from the gap, attached to one another back to back, the glass encasement fogged. The one on the near side is adorned with boxy Corpus lettering and symbols, and fitted with locks that, one by one, begin to snap open with decidedly dramatic clacks. A tall, humanoid shape is visible within, shifting and rousing as Cephalon Sark excitedly speaks.

"The rules are simple! The Broker to land the final blow on the Betrayer takes home the grand prize!" Cephalon Sark sounds positively thrilled. "But remember: only one team can win it all! But as long as investments keep coming in, new Investors and the chances to win come with it!" As he narrates, another platform ascends up the inside of the cliff... and another on the opposite side of the ravine. Two groups of four figures appear, a mix of ostrich-like robots and white-helmeted humanoids bearing high-tech rifles.

"Investors, ready your brokers! The bell is about to ring!"
Kushiko Certain rumors and information always find their ways to certain people--on the one hand, what she's hearing about this makes Kushiko want to actually trace a certain signal--knowing what she generally knows, but as with all things... confirmation.

Besides which, Ergo Glast, who had passed along some information, could certainly provide as an Investor himself, as could the Concord itself, in case the rumors were true. A quote-unquote leashed Tenno. The very concept of which has provoked a certain degree of tranquil fury. And it was through a hefty donation of credits--because she wanted /no one/ owed, be it to Concord or otherwise, that she bought the space for a team.

Those who might actually want to help Kushiko here certainly could, as she advised over the radio at large. But this was something that had her completely unwilling to broker any conflict on. You were either to help her, or weren't. She was there, as Mesa, her Warframe waiting as patiently, as a stone. She merely checked her gleaming guns--quietly prepared and awaiting the beginnings of this special Index fight.

Ergo Glast, via a comm window, simply sighed. "You could have been more... diplomatic about that," he remarks. Kushiko's frame tips her head slightly. <"Maybe. Didn't want there to be any confusion."> The Perrin Sequence President shrugged his shoulders. "Well, the credits have changed hands. I've not been able to gain much more information, but there is room enough for a team other than Specters. Hopefully you'll have precisely that."

Mesa canted her head, a slight 'un' being the last thing she utters, as she looked to other arrivals. Hopefully.
Tomoe The Index? Some sort of combat stock exchange was how Tomoe understood this place. That was the most basic understanding what had caught her attention was there was a Tenno? That was to be faced and the price? That rankled her given her relationship with Kushiko. This would not do at all, this would not do at all. It hadn't taken much to get Tomoe to offer her blade to lend Kushiko a hand in this fight.

So yes Kusiko has at least one person in her corner on this run, she looks to the Tenno for a moment.

"Is there anything I should know about this bloodsport Wallstreet before we jump into this?"

The Salamander seemed ready as she could be for the fight that lay ahead.
Alexis Maaka     "Listen, lady, you need an entry ticke-" CACHUNK. The high pinched hum of an EM-GASH coilgun augmented with the technology of a certain being called Zwei announces all the entry Maaka needs. "I got your ticket right here, mate." "Y-yeah, okay..."

    Mesa sees Maaka arrive, kitted out for war as she enters the match, partly to help out the Tenno and her fellows. Kushiko may actually notice a few things different about her armor. Namely, she's gotten some symbols etched in for Steel Meridian, as well as the Tenno symbol on her chestplate and pauldrons respectively. A blatant 'come at me, bitches' without wasting words.

    "I'm here. Let's get this done."
Note     After trying her damndest to get into the arena as a competitor, Note has been disheartened and on the verge of a temper trantrum at people who kept telling her NO REPUTATION, NO MONEY!

    Well, then she got lucky with Kushiko here.

    Note is here for the fight, for the sake of a good fight! Prize money is just a nice bonus if won at all.

    She can barely contain her excitement. It's brimming across her face even as her breath fogs with every exhale as the group arrives in the arena via elevator.

    Note has HASTILY donned a winter jacket and leggings over her ordinary clothes, with a hole cut for her tail - which seems to be fine in this weather!

    Fine enough.

    Standing up next to the Mesa though, and ENTIRELY unarmed, this... how old is she anyways? 13? 14? Maybe 15? It might seem? Well, this human(+tail?) youth doesn't seem so impressive, imposing, or even threatening.

    At least until she sucks in her breath sharply and widens her stance a little. A rush of brilliant white-blue light leaks from her skin and expands outwards with a rush of mild winds, and any spiritual senses will easily pick up a SURGE from the youth as he focuses her Ki for battle!

    "Thanks for having me! This'll be fun!"

    She... she does know why everyone's here, right?
Zwei     Getting rich quick isn't really the issue here. Even with several years of adventures and misadvantures, upgrades and technical errors under their double belts, Zwei still doesn't suffer from the curse that is finances. In fact, they'd paid their way in with a fat stack of money (which is about as legitimate as Bitcoin in how they'd basically fabricated it out of the digital banking system), though only the one who can actually pass for human is present, clad head to toe in black combat armour that would be utterly generic were it not /so/ featureless that it wraps back around into being bizarre. There are no places to open it up, remove pieces, perform maintenace, or even get in and out of it, like a form-fitting exoskeleton only barely lit up by tiny points of gold light, including three on the blank face.

||Asche would be far better suited to a combat challenge.||
<<True, but only if there were the luxury of blowing everything sky high. There's enough energy to keep both shells running at . . .>>
||"0.41 miliseconds at nominal combat effectiveness. 15 minutes at minimum threat threshold."||
<<"Yeah, after that it's back to the power cells. Lucky that martial artist guy dug them up. Let's try to conserve it anyways.">>

    Into the arena, the surface of Weiss' armour immediately becomes an immaculate patchwork of whites and greys, smoothly broken up by shifting patterns as she moves, like the chromatapores of an excessively sophisticated cephelopod. She moves only as far as necessary to begin scoping out the place, sending out extreme wide sensor signals to pick out the competitors all forced into the same convenient valley, and then lasering in on each for detailed accounts of their equipment, fitness, team composition, energy signature, overall integrity, and basically all the other metadata she needs to sort competitors by their probable role, target softness, team cohesion, endurance, and who has the juciest gear. She basically spreadsheets all of it before committing to doing anything, drawing up a extensive virtual map of the arena and marking blips internally.

<<"Let's Castle if anything goes wrong.">>
||"Good call. I will have one of the power cells secured."||
Zek The two other teams are shielded and well-equipped. One of them is a trio of backpack-power-cell-equipped humans in full body armor, with long, narrow rifles plugged into them. The fourth member is some kind of hovering robot like a clam on its side, all in green, with vertical apertures registering to Weiss' sensors as some kind of energy weapons. The other team consists of a four-legged, low-to-the-ground robot, a pair of chicken walkers, and a helmeted man with a particularly dense force field. It looks like /everything/ has some kind of energy weapon.

The defaced pod opens. The lid swings upwards on a top-mounted hinge, a cloud of fog rolling out. The tall figure inside takes a step forward, shrouded by the mist, and then --

-- collapses. It falls to its knees, struggling for a moment to get back up. It rises slowly, with small, deliberate motions. One hand gets raised, fingers flexed, wrist rolled. Testing. Feeling. It moves like it was wearing an ill-fitting skin, and checking the limits of the same as it rises back to its full height, gradually gaining in dexterity as it does.

It's standing, now. It's humanoid, yes; male, maybe; faceless, definitely. The figure is six-and-a-half feet if it's an inch. A faceless helmet with a black, opaque dome tops its head and fills where its face should be, with a fringe around the jaw that gives it a shape resembling the front of an oncoming train. Dull grey pauldrons edged in faded gold cover shoulders, and overlapping flaps of grey and gunmetal hand over its chest, with darker lines running in outward-sweeping curves to four horizontal cylinders affixed to either side of its torso. The red stripe up the middle is scratched, pitted and faded, showing clear signs of damage and hasty repair.

The limbs don't match. The arms are patchworks of mismatched armor plates hastily painted in a similar but too-fresh color pallette and welded together. The legs are similar, with more organic-looking plates from a bulkier frame forced into the proper shape and fitted to the rest of it. There are lines where the patchwork assembly is clearly visible, and the similarities to Corpus mechanical units taking the field is obvious.

"And here it is! The Betrayer, in its full glory!" the Cephalon shouts. The two other teams swing their guns up to track the figure on the roof. "Can it withstand the capitalist fury of The Index?! /Let's find out/!"

DI-DING!

The bell rings! The two other teams move immediately. The far team, with the backpacks, start to hastily break towards cover to start working across catwalks towards the nearer side of the ravine. On that side, both of the chicken-walkers in the nearby team start spraying suppressive pulse laser fire across Kushiko's team's position, while the man with them ducks into cover. The quadruped whips its black head around, sensors sweeping the vicinity, and leaps towards the rooftop figure.

The 'Betrayer' rushes it. He ducks low, one hand grazing a capsule affixed to his torso and coming away with a small object. He flicks it underneath it, and a shimmer of hazy air billows upwards -- and gravity reverses as the quadruped passes over it, ending up flung skyward, flailing and firing downwards. Shots smack into the figure, the first energy bolt burning armor and the next sending a flicker of blue shielding rippling over his body as he flings himself... into the weird air.

And into the sky.

And then down into the gorge, plummeting towards the iced-over river...
Note     From far across the battlefield, Note studies the other teams. She curls her lips in a bit of distaste at seeing all of the HIGH TECH WEAPONRY when what she really wants is an honest to goodness BRAWL... but she'll take what she can get.

    Though the tech is pretty weird and cool, so it DOES have her looking at it with wide-eyed, childish curiosity here and there!

    But then... the pod.

    Her attention fixes QUICKLY on that pod... and the strange, mis-shappen 'Betrayer' that emerges from it. Note looks quickly between Kushiko's Mesa and the so-called 'Betrayer', blinking up a storm.

    They both have a similar energy to them, after all. And they're VERY different from the things fielded by the other teams.

    But the moment the bell rings...

    "KAI-O-KEN... TIMES TWO!!" Note's filmy white aura basically EXPLODES with enough force to crack the ground under her, shifting to a frantic crimson that blazes out of control. Her energy signature just skyrockets!

    Which allows her to DIVE straight at the chicken-walkers even as they open fire, weaving through half of the lasers that come near her, smacking away a lot more with her palms (HOW does that even work?!) but taking a fair few across her arms and a few grazes along her cheeks. One pulse hits her shoulder and another grazes her leg, but for the most part...

    Once she's down low with the walkers she spins about, aims her body at one and flings a hand out, palm open!

    "HYAAAAAAAH!!!" A torrent of Ki pours out from her hands, roughly bullet shaped, straight for the Walker's legs!

    She is of course aiming to disable these things. Not blow them to smithereens.
Zwei <<Three other teams. One annoyingly familiar, so we'll leave them for last.>>
||The other two seem a reasonable start, but eliminating them first to the exclusion of all else will only allow the external actor to collectively pursue what they have no doubt come for with impunity. Picking off weaker threats is only common strategy when they are unified against you.||
<<Right, right, that's the expert opinion. I'll see what I can do I guess. Either way, I'll have to /start/ with them just to take advantage of the hardware they're carrying. A weapon commandeered is a weapon I didn't pay for after all, and anything left in the power pack is a bonus!>>
||Agreed.||

    Still deep in digital stealth camo, Weiss begins skipping across the arena as swiftly and silently as she can, not resorting to flight or parkour so much as staying low to the ground and white as a ghost, making almost no sound as each foot strikes the ground with vibration absorbent soles and perfectly regulated distribution of balance. She cuts around the far end of the arena from the Multiversal squad, taking a bit of a detour to circle behind the largely human team, where Weiss shifts to match the metal of the catwalks that she vaults up to, making no use of her microthrusters so as not to tip them off.

    When she gets into that position however, instead of enacting bloody violence, she picks one and smacks the rifle out of his hands, catching it as it wings along the reach of its power cord, and then ripping the pack from his back as well. She doesn't even do the good grace of legitimately hurting him, but plunges off the catwalk as soon as she can get her hands on some weaponry, even if she has to struggle with him for a moment to do it, though she won't sit still in front of three other guns if it comes to that.

    Provided rifle acquisition, she drops into a dark recess of the ravine and dials down all her running systems, becoming extremely faint on sensors directed after her. She spends a couple of moments ruthlessly draining the power cell down to the last drop, charging up her own capacitors with it so that she doesn't have to lug the heavy thing around. She also spends some time scanning the internal workings and probable software of the weapon to familiarize herself with it: its effective range, expected deviation, firepower, ammunition count, etc. and then hooks it up to what amounts to a 'HUD' for someone whose eyeballs are decorative.

She's also multitasking. While commandeering and readying herself to use the weapon, Weiss is attempting to infiltrate the equipment of the native competitors, especially the robots. Again, she doesn't do anything overt or destructive. Rather, she jacks positioning software to feed them the data she's keeping of the Elite pack's location, and cranking a few variables in the drones to prioritize them over the Tenno target the minute they both enter the same engagement. The locals stand more of a chance of slowing or stopping the Multiversals if they conveniently go after them at the same time.
Alexis Maaka     Maaka growls as she sees the teams. A pack of them have some moa and a guy with a shield. She sees the prize, and her eyes go wide. A Warframe? Is it connected to the host still? It'd have to be, given the objective is to kill it.

    They don't have time for this, and Maaka's thrusters lift her into the sky as she takes off with her rifle in hand. "Kaio-what?!" She's cut off by Note blasting off, before she unleashes a ki blast at the walkers. Long as it's focused on the other teams.

    Maaka uses her magnetics to run along the walls, propelling herself toward some of the power-cell carrying soldiers while her coilgun lets off a burst of fire, aiming to rip through their armor.
Tomoe Tomoe takes a deep breath today she's not so focused on tanking her Naginata is summoned. With Mooncutter ready Tomoe seem intent to get into the match. She takes in the arena quickly and also takes note of whom they may be fighting. The guys with the backpacks are looking for cover? She will flare our her wings, which are bright red and pretty showy and lift off even as Note shows she's not just for show, she's some kind of crazy martial artist? Okay good to know she'll be going after one of the backpack guys making to rive bomb them and take a few good slices at them.
Kushiko It is something of an issue sometimes, getting here. One which she actually kind of... shakes her head at, when it comes to Alexis. Can't blame her for wanting to keep things straightforwardly simple at that. A slight nod from her, given those words, as she explains the few--basic rules--of the Index to Tomoe as she understands them. In this case, at least--they need to take down the 'Betrayer', or at least keep the other teams from doing so.

A brief look-see of Note--completely new, is this person, before nodding slowly. The Tenno that is Kushiko in her Mesa Warframe doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact Note's young--the truth is, if Note would see her, she'd see someone about as young. The sealed, faceless Warframe shifts slightly, before looking to the Arena's entry point. <"Work on eliminating anyone who isn't our team, then let's see what we can do about the 'Betrayer'. Which will be a Warframe."> Has to be. That's how the Corpus saw them all. Wait, like her?

Once she and the others are into the arena proper, it's another matter to actually engage, evaluate, and get a good idea of what's going on both with the teams they know and any that might try to be interfering. Truth be told, the very first thing she does is immediately activate a power: Shatter Shield, causing her body to look like it's crystalized by a thin layer of frost, or glass, misting out from her elbows. But the pod itself is what makes her outright pause--she recognizes parts of it. It's not right--like pieces were stitched together.

It's enough of a distraction to her that the attacks, the pressure the two Corpus teams seek to put on her team, and it's the immediate reaction that she brings up her own 'suppression' gun: the Supra Vandal, even as she knows, she /recognizes/, instinctively, the traits of the 'frame itself, but... it's not completely right. No, nothing about this is even remotely right. <"Don't hold back!"> she calls out to Note. Even in that fleeting instant, she saw something in the way Note looked to fight. <"There's no room for that here."> Or anywhere here. Capitalist fury besides.

But time to focus--even if something feels... /off/, like something was there that didn't belong. Or maybe she was imagining it, seeing as she needs to focus on fighting the others. And fight she will, what with her shield reflecting firepower back at the Team Robocops, simply moving, heedless with her Warframe's defenses on the level they are now, covering Note with the high powered laser machine gun.

It's, how shall we say, /audibly/ impressive to just about anyone here who has a fancy for guns.
Zek Note starts things off with a bang. She charges in, something that makes the human on the team let out a startled shout even while the two chicken-legged Moas keep firing into her approach path. The flies past them, and one turns with her, the other still focusing fire down-range. The turning one ceases shooting when its line of fire passes over its friendly -- and then gets promptly knocked on its robotic ass when she shoots the legs out from under it. The pulse of ki triggers a flash of blue shields and a screech of tortured metal, the Moa's leg buckling underneath. It pitches over.

The other one comes under return fire from Kushiko's much heavier weapon. It suddenly ducks low, shots scoring off its own shields, folding up behind waist-high cover. It rotates oddly, flipping and rising slightly, poking its gimballed gun-turret out and returning heavy fire from the covered position. That means it isn't paying attention to Note... but the shielded guy back there is, taking the opportunity to jab her with a high-powered electrical prod while she's in close and dealing with the Moa. ZAP!

The other team has different troubles. One of them is abruptly divested of gun and pack, to which he calls a startled and offended, "Hey!" as Weiss just straight-up takes his gun, too surprised to put up much of a fight. He grabs something off a mag-point on his suit and fires downward, shotgun-like sprays of radiation pulses following her down from the catwalk from whatever crazy sidearm he comes with.

His buddy staggers under Maaka's attack from the side of the arena, shots making his shields flash and then cutting into his armored jumpsuit. He ducks behind a narrow metal plate under the catwalk's railing, blindly but surprisingly accurately flinging a pulse grenade into her path, the weapon adhering to the wall and exploding in multiple waves of blue energy to box her in. The third backpack-carrier ends up right in Tomoe's path, hastily blocking sword-strokes with his surprisingly reinforced rifle, jumping back with a practiced hop and levelling it at her.

She finds out what it is just as Weiss does a scan to discover the same: an ice beam. The freeze ray spreads deadly cold and clumps of fast-formed ice, threatening to encase her. The big hovering drone rises up, weapon apertures swiveling -- and then the one shooting at her yells, "After the target!" It beeps once, then zips off the catwalk, diving down towards the frozen river...

... and the Warframe at the bottom. Wide-angled blasts of energy pepper the surface of the river, and the patchwork 'Betrayer' at the bottom scrambles across the surface, gliding like he was skating. His shields flicker again, and he banks into a crevice -- and runs right past Weiss, the opaque faceplate momentarily turned to regard the accidental discovery. Up close, it's easy to tell what wasn't immediately clear before: they left him unarmed, too.

The Warframe runs straight up the cliff face not ten feet from her. He backflips off of it, diving down on top of the heavy robotic unit. Weiss' subtle infiltration meets with a second abrupt presence, something brute-forcing its way onto the tactical network she's quietly subverting. The hovering robot dips dangerously, recovering... until the Warframe's mismatched hand flares with sensors scrambled garbage telemetry errors reported no data no data no data weird light, cutting it off the tac-net with a burst of nonsense data and, apparently, killing it instantly.

The 'Betrayer' rides it to a tight bend in the river, and then drags it into cover. The sound of metal ripping and dead servos groaning is clearly audible.
Note     "Yeah!" Down goes the Moa! And now that she's close enough to examine them, Note feels some relief... it's just some bot, so nothing to worry about!

    In her distracted moment of triumph though-- BZZZZZZZZT!

    The moment that prod makes contact, all of her muscles fire at once, and in a panic she drops out of the Kaioken technique before it RIPS her body apart. The red glow vanishes... as instead, her flesh sizzles and smokes and OH is she screaming!

    But with one bit of focus she KICKS the ground, breaking away, and arcs back into the snow with a big crash that kicks up a PLUME of it. She flips about unevenly and slams back to her feet in a hurry, panting wildly....

    "You're gonna PAY for that one. The gloves are coming OFF!" Unwilling to approach with a SHOCK BATON in the fray, and leery of that heavy shield...

    "KAIOKEN... TIMES THREE!" The snow EXPLODES away from Note in a wave of wind blasted outwards by her surging crimson aura.

    And once more she aims her palm... but this time, instead of a single bullet of Ki that flies out?

    A DOZEN shots of swirling, arcing energy fly out ALMOST simultaneously, all curving in at different angles for the man with his shield!
Alexis Maaka     Maaka curses as she narrowly avoids running directly into one of the explosives dropped ahead of her, bouncing off the wall. Her shields crackle and blurr, as she dives behind cover. Her gear is pretty visibly taking a pounding, as she feels a few shots hit her arm and shoulder. She primes a grenade and draws her sidearm, sliding out from her hiding spot.

    The gun kicks in her hand as she fires upon her opponent, before tossing the frag grenade at him.
Kushiko Amidst the clash of teams, there's something to be said for /feeling/ that very same thing one is made of herself--even if this being wields it in a far greater offensive capacity than she herself currently does. So many questions rise amidst the ones being answered. Which unfortunately for her, she needs to briefly use a bit of cover to keep that second Moa off it's game while Note's back there.

<"Enough of this."> she curtly remarks. She stows the Supra Vandal, and with a faint 'click' and odd little pulsation, a storm of Void sparks and motes of light coalesce around her--not quite the same way that that 'Betrayer' is doing down there, but it definitely feels like cold death roiling off of her as she engages her Peacemaker ability. An ability that makes the tonfa-looking things on her forearms slide forward, and flip up into her hands. Hands that use them like a pair of long guns.

And then she's suddenly firing in rapid succession, with absolutely /disgusting/ accuracy, her body shifting and moving so fast it's leaving faint, blurry afterimages with each dizzying series of rounds from the Regulator sidearms that've become part of her body. She rolls forward, to the side, every shot seeming to make her shields glint and burn brightly from the return fire, but she's basically going to lay down covering fire with singular precision to all within her sight.

And maybe even those that are trying to use cover--you have to be blocking yourself off completely from her at this point to avoid her current storm of fire, her Waltz of bullets and death to support the rest of her team. They need to get after the target, just as the Corpus said.
Zwei     This would be the point where Weiss would be happy it's her helmet's sensors interpreting Voidlight instead of her own, but for all intents and purposes, they're basically one and the same. Only the visual portion seems to pick up anything. The purple light is garbage data on every other front, telling her nothing about it other than how it looks.

    <<"Guy you are not making this easy.">> she mumbles.

    The 'Betrayer' skips right past her, which is all very well, because she's not about to jump in after him like a rabbit chase. She has a weapon less overtly lethal than she'd hoped, but the free pick of a complete mess of a firefight up above, and if the main target is completely unarmed, she can always Castle later to handle it at leisure, as much as that word could be used here.

||Known targets. Alexis Maaka. Current configuration includes STALKER suit and EM-gash rifle.||
<<Oh good. That means I already know exactly what her kit does. Heck, I built the first thing.>>
||Second known target. Tomoe. Nom de Guerre: Iron Lily.||
<<Game avatar. That saves me a lot of trouble and some misplaced shots.>>
||Other targets include a similar energy signature to the Betrayer, and a Saiyan.||
<<Oh for- it's been ONE DAY! One day!>>

    Weiss makes a snap judgement, in as far as any judgement made by computing can be considered hasty. When the Warframe leaps up onto its new ride, Weiss gets out the only weapon she actually had on her: an Earth-standard handgun with hollow points, one round missing, and a second full magazine, taken off a frozen corpse in the Soft Expanse. She actually hurls them both high into the air from her concealed position, straight up and into grabbing range of the fox in this hunt, for whatever good he might do with it in slowing the others down.

    A handgun flying up out of nowhere is also a pretty good distraction, and something weird enough to gain both immediate notice, and non-immediate comprehension. During the pistol's hangtime, Weiss wheels, sights, and fires the freeze laser at the frag grenade in mid-air, before quickly whipping it straight down at Maaka by tracking its arc in reverse, and slashing it across her to freeze her throwing arm and the coil gun in her other hand.

||Weapon insufficient to penetrate STALKER suit. Earth-standard ordnance vulnerable to excessive cold. Estimated coil thaw time: 28 minutes.||

    As long as she can hold the beam before the weapon needs to rest, she then sweeps it over Tomoe, aiming for her feet to anchor her fighter to the ground, and piling it on from there to try and stack up SAO's frost ailment.

||Specialized melee fighter. Ranged attacks require lengthy startup, limited resources, and are restricted to line of sight. Flight is a key asset. Immobilize. Game system will likely register as negative status.||
Zwei     While the gun has to cycle, Weiss makes a break to catch the frozen grenade, still in full camo, though this makes her look mostly like a mild, grainy digital blur filter on the snow background. The moment she snatches it, possibly mid-jump, she turns the rifle on Note off in the distance and fires the beam dead center mass. Just as the martial artist would have time to turn around and look back to where it'd come from however, Weiss is gone, disappeared in a blip of red tint on the surrounding area. On the total opposite side of the valley, a precise flex of her grip cracks the ice off the frag, and she hurls it at the Saiyan's rear arc faster than it is really aerodynamically designed to, since the remaining fuse time is a few fractions of a second.

||Saiyan adversary likely to have inexplicable preemptive senses. Fights in mono-focus. Displays obvious situational combat inexperience. Attack from multiple angles. Distract and damage. Ki-sense is useless against artificial shells, so use to advantage.||
Tomoe Tomoe is trying to get the Corpus fighters to just stay down really she's not as bloody-minded as one might expect in a fight like this. She finds herself facing someone whos better-skilled than she thought given his rifle holds from the spear strikes she sees him hopping back with a fair bit of skill. The ice beam fires and Tomoe was expecting an energy blast or a solid shot. Not a freeze ray and she's now ending up and it does start to encase her she can feel the ice moving the cold, and hears the crackling of the ice she's slowly encased tills he's just about sealed up by the ice shot. She's thankfully not frozen solid and just trapped. Between her and Zwei's sudden attack, she had little experience with the technological ghost to be sure. She was, however, learning to ignore it over what she knew? Was a bad idea.

She tries to not panic and an idea strikes her she starts to chant subvocally and golden runes circle her frozen form, she's clearly doing something here.

THere is then a burst of flame which causes the ice to weaken and start o melt to the point Tomoe burests free she's looking a bit sizzled and she notes.

"...I got to admit you got me there.."

She's also looking a little burned herself. It seems she cast a fire spell on her self to get out of the ice.

She then chants again more runes dance about her followed by a barrage of light rays not at the Corpus for the moment but at, Weiss. There is that windup time to be sure but Tomoe's still going to take her move at it.

If Zwei is paying attention to scanner data from Tomoe? There's something odd, about the Avatar that doesn't line up with prevoious run ins with anyone who was from the Death Game or related wander mode users. There's way more mass there now, way more mass.
Alexis Maaka     Maaka's eyes widen as she sees a familiar laser blast, but suddenly her arms are frozen. THey lock into place, frost stopping her limbs in place as she frantically tries to free them by flexing her limbs. "MOTHERFU-COME ON!" She growls harshly, trying to smash her limbs against the walls and other surfaces to crack through the ice. It doesn't work, by the looks of it. It's gonna be a bit before she can thaw her way out of this.

    Right now, flexing would be VERY helpful if this wasn't a MUSH dictated by mostly realistic physics.
Zek The handgun goes up -- and gets snatched out of the air on the way past. The 'Betrayer' doesn't say anything when it happens (there's no mouth, how would it), but there's a burst of signal noise, like someone was trying to broadcast unsuccessfully through some kind of jamming. Huh.

Maaka's grenade goes sailing through the sky... and gets intercepted by shots from below. Not one to waste an opportunity, the backpacker on the catwalk taking cover pivots, taking a knee and levelling his ice beam at Tomoe, too. Two of them fire on her now, doing their level best to fully encase her and take her out of the fight for a little while -- something that might be even harder to handle with the shots from Weiss below her! The non-backpacked member of that team...

...points his gun towards the other Corpus team. He advances down the catwalk, past the meleer, snapping off shots from his rad-shotpistol into the brawl between Note and the shielded guy. It pelts the shield, forcing him into cover, making the Moa change targets to return fire instead of firing on Kushiko.

Note's ki blasts hammer into him. The shield is a personal force field of some intensity, but the combined onslaught is too much. It collapses, and he jerks like a shaken doll, knocked off his feet and sent tumbling away into a snow bank where he lies still after the flurry of blasts. The damaged Moa rotates on the ground, firing snapshots upwards at the Saiyan, who has no less than three angles of attack to deal with --

-- then, suddenly, two. Kushiko's Peacemaker quiets both Moas with rapid, precise shots, coring the robots and turning them to sparking debris. The guys on the catwalk begin to back off, using Tomoe as ice-coated cover from the incoming fire, trying to get to a point of better concealment against the fusillade. Their tactical network is abuzz with back and forth, but, remarkably, they're keeping their cool.

The quadrupedal unit stalks up towards Kushiko while she's firing. Gun turrets swivel out from behind its forward shoulders, firing bursts of light energy-fire. Lightning arcs off of it as it circles, lashing out to stun her so it can deliver a finishing blow.

Then, suddenly, the other Warframe reappears. It springs upwards out of the ravine, clearing the uppermost cliffs like it was shot out of a cannon. In its hands is the guts of the flying drone, an awkward-looking L-shaped assembly of metal covered in packed coils and with some kind of power core spliced into a cut in the side. The front has... lenses. Lots and lots of lenses.

The 'Betrayer' lines up at the top of the cliff for a split second and fires. The optical multi-cannon screams, a dense, wide pillar of energy flashing out and summarily annihilating the waist-high cover between the cliff's edge and the quadruped -- or what's left of it, now -- and keeps going, bursting into a brilliant explosion as it hits a wall near Kushiko and blossoms outward.

He grabs the edge of the cliff, flipping himself up on top of it. There's a loud whine as it charges, and he swings the cannon back up in line with the Saiyan instead. She doesn't need to be able to sense killing intent to know that this patchwork opponent is full of just that.
Alexis Maaka     "C'mon..." Maaka thwacks her arms against a hard surface until a CRACK indicates she's broken through the frosty layers on her arms. She promptly bends her arms and moves them around, breaking off pieces of ice as she frees herself. "So glad I'm enviro-sealed in this thing." She growls, before she takes off to chase after the Warframe that isn't Mesa, all the while taking aim at the backpacker on the catwalk.

    Using her grapple and boosters to propel herself up to the catwalk, Maaka makes pursuit, firing onto the backpacker again with her 10mm, aiming at the backpack to damage it. Knowing from experience, shooting out those tanks tend to be beneficial...if risky.
Note     Another knockout! Note cracks an oddly cheerful and victorious smile, flashing a V-sign with her right hand at the triumph!

    But lowers it just as she realizes there's SOMEONE TOO CLOSE-- "Hyagkh--" The radiation pistol burns right through her jacket, leaving parts of it smoldering awfully. Seems to have singed flesh too by the way she waves the arm around and gathers her spirit for a counterattack--

    Then a RUSH of noise screams at her from one side, and her head turns swiftly to check on that and-- "Ooooowahhhghk---"

    It's all she can DO to fling her arms up and shield her face. Reinforced with a thin film of Ki, the blast does strike dead on. She's blown backwards across the snow and drags her feet hard to kill the momentum...

    Once again the Kaioken aura dies down, and this time she doesn't renew it. Looking a little winded from using it so hard twice in a row only to get PELTED in fact, she's staying low to the ground, looking EVERY which way now instead of relying on her Ki senses.

    Apparently that's ONE lesson learned. She can't rely on her Ki sense as much around here!
    Possibly two: Enemies are EVERYwhere.

    But just as she's getting her footing back.... KRAKOOOM!!

    And Note goes flailing through the air, tumbling around and around, along with splashes of blood and tattered chunks torn from her jacket. It's looking pretty sad at this point, all rags and fluffy lining. However...

    The tailed martial artist RECOVERS, simply SWERVING through the air under her own power and rising straight up. She rips the rest of it off in a hurry...

    She's in quite a bad way, all things considered. One arm scorched and singed. Her outfit's full of holes and splashed with blood. It's a wonder she hasn't lost an eye or something through all that! And, most tellingly, she's breathing pretty hard and looking quite scared for once.

    WHAT THE HELL kind of fight did she sign up for?! Maybe she should've checked what KIND of match was being held before throwing herself at it.

    In just a few short moments, she mulls over what mistakes she's been making while looking down at the battlefield and realizes...

    She just -really- wants a duel, but nobody else is of that mindset.

    So now, Note just -really- wants this to be over with. And the best way to do it...

    Her gaze locks on the 'Betrayer', and DETERMINATION ignites in her eyes.

    In the very next moment, you can't -see- her eyes. Or the rest of her. She just VANISHES in a blur of motion and---

    "HYIAT!!" The next she's on the ground, UNDERNEATH the cannon, and driving an elbow up towards the 'Betrayer's' belly. A blow that will lead into a swift combo of aggressive flip kicks, chops, and knife hand thrusts, which might well end with her diving BETWEEN the warframe's legs and doing her best to send him flying with a KICK to the rump off into the snowbanks!
Kushiko The appearence of another 'team', in this case another combatant who had been keeping her--themself? Off the proverbial radar does confirm the sense of unease the Tenno had prior. Yet it's not something she can rapidly deal with thanks to a CERTAIN TYPE of quadrupedal robot. Internally, she's pissed as hell, because /that/ damnable blast of energy was enough to sap and stun her and make her stagger forward, dropping to one knee.

It's moments away from being knocked out and being forced to try and surge her systems but she's in luck thanks to the 'Betrayer' as it were. She recognized at least a portion of those systems being not unlike Vauban, but the rest... the rest baffles her, as does the multi-core Opticor.

In this instance, she has to decide, rather quickly, on what do actually do--best case? Warn Note, hope that the 'Betrayer' recognizes her Mesa as a fellow Warframe to some degree, but the priority is 'eliminate everyone else but the Betrayer' while keeping clear of it. Even then, she's damaged from the explosive impact, though she's far better off from say, getting finished off in her momentarily stunned state as she was. The wreckage of the quadruped is given a 'look' before she quickly salvages an energy cell for her own use.

So she goes to this plan, pivoting and then sending herself up on a Void-assisted leap upwards, her body spiralling as she does so. <"Get out of there, Note!"> comes the transmitted voice sortof *around* Note instead, to serve as a directed warning via disembodied voice.

Shooting Gallery -- as it's known, something that improves general gunplay, but has a benefit regardless--like when it 'jumps' to others, it has a great ability to actually jam firing systems of anyone nearby--selectively, of course. No friendly fire issues here. The real question, where does it need to go? Focusing sensors outward and having seen more than a few of those glints, she needs to find--ah. There!! Now, that little power, it ends up is on Note herself--a revolving little satellite of energy trailing a faint lilac light. Both Weiss and this Betrayer could both end up having their weaponry and systems experiencing a jam if they linger too close, though her priority is getting Weiss effected more.

For the time being, she switches up her tack--where she's at, she leaps to another part of the arena, given where Tomoe is and being used as an adhoc cover, and starts laying down /impressive/ amounts of firepower to drive them away from Tomoe so as they can actually do something about their predicament without as much pressure.
Tomoe This time Tomoe is ready for ice beams this time and she's going to keep moving now and avoiding getting hit. Oh God they have more ice beams three of the damn thing she can attempt to dodge them but they are going to keep laying down the fire and as the tank knows? No one can dodge forever, there's some level of respect though 0for how these guys are keeping their heads in a fight like this. She can not dodge all the ice beams forever and again she's getting ice covered once more, she's slowing down and they are using her as cover? She's going to attempt to break free again, and she has other options than, flight to manoeuvre.

She does not like being cover and with the help from Kushiko she's just going to break free with raw strength now sending a shower of ice shards as she's finally free and on the move.

No wings no she's going leap on the nearest of the guys using her as cover and attempt to grab his gun and wrench it away from them. Hopefully catching the Corpus Crewman unawares of her super human strength.
Zwei <<Confirmed direct hits on all counts! It's working out!>>
||Number of combatants rapidly dwindling. The primary participant of the Index appears to have no interest in defending his or itself against non-aggressors.||
<<Yeah but it looks like these jackasses are pretty peachy keen on messing him up, given the Saiyan. You think they really need the money that bad? I mean, I know Maaka is a mercenary and all.>>
||Unknown, and for now, irrelevant. The package is top priority. None of them have paid much attention to the real prize. Interrupt, misdirect, secure and then exfiltrate. The enemy is weakened or preoccupied, and their primary opposition is now heavily armed.||
<<Within simulated tolerance. Cool.>>

    The freeze beam in Weiss' hands abruptly becomes so much static-fuzzed garbage when she drops out of cover again to keep up the pressure. She doesn't need line of sight to keep track of the Elites nor the Corpus, but she needs it to shoot. With Mesa's interference being broadly painted over entire areas of the field though, sticking to the so-far underwhelming weapon isn't worth the trouble. She doesn't have a whole team of these coordinating fire, with backup weapons to deal the finishing blow, as was the strategy for the team she'd stolen it from.

    Weiss quickly chucks the gun and drops into the ravine, electing to pulse anti-grav for a costly second just to avoid cracking the ice so that she can take a low approach out of the way of any more interference, as the match rapidly escalates into scanner tag. Instead, while the others are busy, Weiss reaches the opposite cliff and rockets up from over the lip, precisely calculated to reach peak verticality where the Betrayer is, and thus by extension, Note.

    She isn't ostensibly armed, but that doesn't really matter when her body rotates over itself with the pulse of microthruster dots, bringing a diamond hard, armour plated, rocket propelled heel down in an axe kick on Note's collarbone, suddenly jumping in on the Betrayer's side for a 2v1. The camo is sort of useless at that point, so she lets it drop and fizzle off, revealing the seemingly sculpted black exosuit.

    <<"Wow you're really rushing into trying to get the last hit, huh? You that scared of me or something~ Come on, didn't mean to spook you /that/ bad!">> Though it's unlikely the prime target of this fox hunt would turn on her at this point, she still beams an encrypted communique to him anyways.
Zek Shooting the backpack-canister has amazing results. Amazing, terrible results.

The first of the shots hit depleted shields and punch through. Another hits a hose, tearing it free, spraying pressurized white fog everywhere. The next ruptures the tank properly, causing a catastrophic 'WHUMP' -- and leaving an ice sculpture where that particular backpack-bearing Corpus agent was. The one with the radiation gun, huddled up behind the same cover, is half engulfed by the same blast, his gun-hand and lower half of his body frozen in the mass. He's punching ineffectively at it, trying to get free.

It'll take a while.

Tomoe breaks free again while he's working at that. The remaining pack-wearing Corpus tries to cover him, leaning out of his not-frozen cover to see Tomoe practically on top of him, acting in a role akin to the Juggernaut and intent on closing. She grabs hold of his freeze ray -- and he refuses to let go at first, dangling from it as she yanks it from him like she was taking a toy from a child.

With practiced speed, he disengages the lock on the canister on his back, letting it swing off of him heavily and inconveniently crack her in the lower legs as it swings off. He backpedals, grabbing a sphere off his belt and tossing it into the air where it develops little hover-rotors and zips around his head. A coherent beam of blue shines down over him, his shield becoming visible as it intensifies. His other hand goes down to his waist, grabbing a large, bulky pistol with a heavy, multi-chambered barrel. It spins up -- and then vomits a rapid-fire continual spray of energy bolts into Tomoe's face.

Note locks eyes on the 'Betrayer.' She sees a blank visor where a face should be, and can read nothing of his intent beyond the barrel of his weapon. She flash-steps close to him, faster than any human eye can track --

-- and he twitches his aim very slightly, her step carrying her to look directly down the barrel as he touches the contact to discharge the cannon. It's point blank. He can't possibly miss.

The cannon doesn't go off. It sparks, and it dies. His head twitches up to that spiralling energy of Kushiko's, and then to the distant Mesa.

Note hits him in the stomach. Her first blow doesn't bow him. She hammers into a cerulean haze of energy, the shield dispersing the kinetic energy and lessening the impact. She doesn't actually touch him; her skin is a fraction of an inch from the surface of the armor, held off by a glowing energy field for that heartbeat they connect.

The beat passes. He drops the cannon mid-combo, swinging his arms up into trained but non-expert blocks. She pounds through the shield with a flurry of blows, feeling the satisfying sense of hands chopping into oddly-smooth metal. It /feels/ like she's hitting armor worn over a person's body, strikes bruising and battering the wearer underneath, but the lack of seams that aren't clearly grafts...

The cannon hits the ground. She dives past him, smaller stature helping her get behind him. A kick snaps up -- and he twists, taking the hit in the hip, skidding backwards across the artificial platform and into the snow, casting a spray of white up behind him. Weiss appears at about the same time, giving him a second to recover from the staggering blow and cast a head-twitch of acknowledgement toward the decloaked figure.

And then he's snapping that handgun up from where it had adhered to his other hip, swinging it in line with the Saiyan. He fires with expert control and astounding precision, aiming to stitch three bullets from shoulder to elbow on her favored side and then pop her in the knee with the fourth. Hand-to-hand did not seem to be his forte; this, however, is.
Note     Note. Is. LEARNING!

    And how is this known? Because she takes advantage of the situation! With the 'Betrayer' getting knocked sailing away for a few seconds, she drops her stance low and brings both hands to her side, palms opposite each other.

    A crimson aura rushes up around her as the Kaioken's called upon once again to surge her power beyond its limits!

    "Kaaaaaa..... Meeeeeee..... Haaaaaa.... Meeeeeeee...."

    It does, indeed, look like she's about to BLAST the 'Betrayer' with the best she's got! With the Shooting Gallery power flowing through her, that would be pretty intense, wouldn't it? A swirling sphere of compressed, roiling Ki forms between her palms, spears of light escaping from the technique as she shapes and forms it! The Betrayer's in trouble, right?

    Except...

    Except, that's NOT her target. Instead Note reacts to WEISS coming down at her, springing upwards with both her feet and swerving just to the side--

    And then, the wacky happens! Note's TAIL curls ever so slightly around the plunging foot as it's coming down... and as Note's rising.

    This results in her swinging around to just BEHIND the descending Weiss...

    "HAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" And thrusting both her hands down and at Weiss's back, unleashing a torrential outpouring of searing blue-white ki at practically point-blank range with Weiss caught between the blast and the ground... if all goes well!

    This will not be at all a great thing for ANYONE near ground zero, as the beam slams into the frozen ground with or without a Weiss trapped below! Snow's vaporized and the ground beneath it just EXPLODES in a thundering drill-like effect. DOWN DOWN DOWN goes the beam into the surface of the asteroid...

    The downside to this is that Note's exposed! "Will you STOP trying to shoot me?! Someone like you's coming to help!" Well... that's what she HOPES is going on. All she has to go on is the weird similarity between what the Mesa feels like... and the 'Betrayer!'

    But shots have been fired, and so she has to abort the Kamehameha to shield herself! The first few bullets strike her arms and legs, penetrating only an inch or so and then rebounding OUT but leaving nasty looking wounds. Others...

    Frantically, while cranking on FULL REVERSE FLIGHT to put some distance between herself and this mess, Note sweeps her hands this way and that, striking bullets STRAIGHT OUT OF THE AIR with blink-and-you'll-miss knifehands.
Zwei     <<Makes sense why they'd drop him in unarmed. Not that it'd stay that way for long if other people got to bring weapons.>>
||That may have been the point. A sporting head start. Clearly an individual or creed of some infamy.||
<<That just means the stuff is worth the trouble! He seems like a smart guy!>>

    Of course, Zwei can't just leave the guy to get beat to a pulp by an ornery monkey. On the other hand, Weiss doesn't have a lot of approach options. Jumping into CQC at a dialed down tempo likely wasn't an effective call, but it keeps the Saiyan busy while the Betrayer gets some distance and puts that gun she'd tossed him to good use, keeping Note occupied with the bullets that'd been left. Good old Willis had the sense to only use one.

<<Whoa!>>
||Yes.||
<<Castling out!>>
||Castling in.||

    Rather than get taken along for a whole convoluted combo ride and eat a kahemaha to the face like an absolute idiot, Weiss surrounds herself with . . . well not much. An aura of redshifted 'tint' on the environment around her, or at least an artifact of the eye to that effect. The giant beam blast competely drowns out the result --both visually and audibly-- with its gratuitous overkill, no doubt criminally guilty of the dramatic billowing smoke cloud for firing directly into a mined-out space rock. Rather than clearing to show the season's villain utterly unscathed by the attack, it blows away to show that Weiss had gone 'nope not dealing with this', and vanished somehow. Not 'put the camo back up' vanished, but vanished vanished.

    Not out of the fight entirely it seems. Note has only just turned back to the Betrayer when the same aberrant tinge of light, this time shifted violet, drops Weiss out of the air and into a dropping tackle onto the frankensteined combatant from behind, only to flash red again and take him with her along a sonic crack of a briefly lived vacuum, and the faint smell of air plasma. This is to deliberate effect, where the two of them wind up right back up at the twin pods that this whole mess had started from, communicating with her impromptu partner/abductee who doesn't really have any better choice completely via encrypted transmissions.

    Zwei doesn't have any illusions about that somehow shaking the entire dome off though, nor really buying enough time to do much. That's why the castle maneuver, so named after its chess origins, deposits an additional adversary in the way of the group. As opposed to Weiss' feminine, humming glass rim tones, a voice addresses Note that sounds like an ammo fire being broadcast through a bass amp, saying simply:

    ||"Hello."||

    The inhuman figure easily three times Note's height then swings a proportionately oversized fist at her, going through the entire windup and followthrough motions at a janky super-accelerated pace, briefly igniting the air from what could only be called a "sucker punch" for being too fast and under-telegraphed to really seem sporting. An actual boom follows the swing.
Zwei <<Was that really necessary? That punch was like a quarter of the battery! You know the budget!>>
||I know, and yet it felt worthwhile.||
<<Sending a message?>>
||Sending a message.||

    Asche begins moving forward, inexorably tracking across the valley arena with long, bizarrely graceful strides of massive, heavily armoured, triple-jointed legs with an overtly 'take all comers' posture. Weiss remains at the pods, guzzling battery at a precarious rate to crunch the necessary numbers to finish this off. Nobody here needs to /know/ that they're near the end of their tether, and definitely don't have the power necessary to be employing Asche at full throttle. He just needs to be scary for a minute while the ground around the pods bleeds into the red spectrum. Their 'Betrayer' here should know exactly why. Zwei doesn't suspect he has much motive to stay at this point.
Tomoe There is some planning gone on with Kushiko and Note, they have a rough plan now; It's something at least Weiss is the target they really need to deal with. She only had a limited understanding of Zwei, other than it was from some kind of Elder race. She keeps that in mind and expects Technology that might as well be full on /magic/. She will just do as she's always done fight and work with what she does know.

Weiss, however, is now her primary target, and she will have to act, she now has his close up pistol to deal with and she's had enough issued with firearms to know, staying still is a bad idea, and she shows another aspect of her abilities she's fast and the entire arena is not obstacles to her, no it's a damn jungle gym, for her to get around with.

She moves up scrambling up, has her spear in hand again and she will drop down on him intending to take him down with her Melee weapon.

<<I'm tied up with this guy sorry!>>
Kushiko This is very literally, going straight to hell in a way she should have accomodated for a little bit better--she didn't communicate when she is so accustomed to /not/ needing to communicate at times, so two things happen: one, she actually throws comms to both Note and Tomoe.

The second, is a great deal more simpler, and revolves in her trying to communicate to the 'Betrayer' as well. On the other hand, she is fairly contented by the fact she technically isn't considered the 'Betrayer' as well in question: knock her out, and by potential loopholes in wording, you could make a claim on the prize. Who knows what they could try and do.

Still, she crosses the field /rapidly/, practically gliding at one point thanks to her enhanced mobility aspect, to reach the cliff where the Betrayer, Note and Zwei are. She has to trust her at this point, the Iron Lily to fight as she can. Mercifully, the same buff that briefly gave Note some help, will shortly 'jump' to her, giving her a little more oomph at least.

Weiss is her current focus, the gunslinger frame bringing herself to bear upon that exosuit once she's gotten herself repositioned. Clinging, actually, to part of the cliffside in that direct vicinity, mostly to give Note some breathing room, but to interfere--only to see... /that/. <"That's just /absurd/."> There's no other way to actually describe what the Saiyan's doing here but absurd. <"Damnit,"> she curses under her proverbial breath, the disembodied voice echoing between herself and the rest of the impromptu 'team' as it were.

And then this Asche--Weiss--whatever the hell they are, throws her off for a few moments. She hates to do it, but all she can hope for right now is for Note to be able to hold this newly minted and inhuman figure off for a few fleeting seconds, because she needs to make up for the mistakes she's been making. <"Not your enemy!"> comes Kushiko's disembodied voice. <"You are Tenno, like me! I'm sorry this went down the way it has so far, and I'm /really/ sorry about what happened with your--/really/ sweet Opticor-looking weapon. But I have no intention of letting you be like this."> Like some sport animal for the Corpus.

Her Supra Vandal is not leveled at him, but her attention is kept perfectly between him, and looking towards those pods where Weiss is at, before vaulting off of her chosen perch and landing close enough for him to properly 'see' her, as it were, though some sense of cognition happens when she spots Weiss and what they're doing.

Part of her playing things this way was to not give the Corpus any openings for their tendency to be completely underhanded. The time for subterfuge is way past gone. <"Not here for any money. Just to get you out of here."> she finishes. <"I don't know what you're doing over there, but explain, quickly, please."> she finishes, leaving Note and Tomoe to their foes. The prospect of another Tenno here, and the growing fear that Weiss may well be doing something that, if she didn't act now...
Note     Awwwwwwwwww crap!! Note blinks a few times! The strange red-light's suspicious, and it puts her immediately on edge. But then... with Weiss dashing off with the VIP... that's odd. DASHING OFF? Not BEATING UP? What's up with that?

    ... Is there SOMEONE ELSE here that's got the same mission as Team Kushiko?!

    In the few seconds she's mulling this over - and not well, being COVERED in bleeding wounds. The Saiyan-blooded youth's dealing with mounting injury, both from being PUMMELED time and again (really, HOW is she still intact and fighting as well as she is after all that?) AND the incredible strain put on her body by the Kaioken.

    And yet she's now got Asche flying straight at her with GINORMOUS FIST ACTION!

    Well that's a thing she can deal with. And this time, she's pretty sure there's NO more surprises waiting.

    Build-wise, there's ABSOLUTELY no way that Note should be able to deal with that. Asche's tens of times heavier than her for a certainty. And such speed! And yet...

    This girl's confidence as a martial artist is NOT misplaced!

    "RIGHT BACK AT 'YA!!"

    She soars straight at Asche, her own, comparatively miniscule fist slamming straight into the blow.

    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

    Two forces colliding with that much impact is NOT GOOD for anyone nearby. A horrendous shockwave blasts out in all directions, accompanied by what's basically thunder!

    And in that one moment, Asche might just be able to calculate that there's something -way- off about Note's mass.

    Somehow, it's several times what a girl her age and build ought to be.

    Still not quite enough to offset Asche though! Note's sent flying backwards and tumbling end over end... wringing her arm out as it tingles like NOTHING else. "Hnnnnnghh..."

    THAT HURT A LOT. But a grin spreads on her face.

    FINALLY, A WORTHY OPPONENT!

    "ABOUT TIME! Show me what else you can DO. THIS is what I signed up for, not that madness!"

    Asche is NOT the only one that can move fast... but Note is much smaller, and she tries to use that to her advantage - by blitzing out of sight and then coming in at odd angles for a lightning series of flying kicks and crushing knifehand chops!

    Very few punches from this girl. Her fighting style's way more refined and precise than most Zwei might've seen so far!
Zek The last, heroic Corpus broker does his best to fight the Iron Lily, but it doesn't end well. He empties the automatic pistol into her -- or maybe more accurately into the spot she had just been standing, bright blue bolts scattering through the air. A few pass over the head of his partly-frozen teammate, earning him a yelled, "Watch it!" from the struggling man.

Tomoe moves in to finish the fight, and no amount of backup guns is going to stop her. It's a one-two punch to drop him, turning him from courageous capitalist Corpus competitor to someone crumpled and crushed. He's laid out flat without much effort now that he's alone, and, thanks to that shield drone, probably isn't even dead. They worked well as a team, but alone, they can only do so much!

Meanwhile, momentary contact is made. Attempts to get anything from this so-called Betrayer result in garbled radio transmissions, like his outgoing comms were being jammed. It makes communicating in the heat of the moment next to impossible.

It doesn't mean he doesn't understand, though. Note yells, and the patchwork combatant looks up through the cloud of pulverized space-rock, body language indicating confusion. He staggers slightly, looking this way and that with another blurt of senseless static. After a second, he finds the other Warframe in the confusion of the battle, flashing hand signals at it: 'radio contact,' 'negative,' 'hostile tech,' 'unknown.'

That's about when Weiss teleport-tackles him. Totally unprepared for it, he gets dragged along for the ride, translocated up to the pods and getting his footing again almost immediately. There's another blurt of noise, and he turns to Weiss, extending a thumb and pinky on one hand like a phone while he clips the gun to his side again, and then tapping knuckles and shaking the hand like something was broken. He can't so easily communicate in combat cant, and it looks like he really can't physically speak, either.

Kushiko points her big gun his way. Not /at/ him, but she makes it clear that she's got it. She closes, and his hand snaps back up, pistol held tight. He keeps it pointed at her, putting himself between her and the pod. His free hand slowly reaches up, touching two fingers to the side of his head, and then slowly pulling his hand away again, rubbing them with his thumb and looking at them quizzically. Like they should be wet, maybe from an injury.

He shakes his head. The Betrayer pats around his chest like he was checking pockets, then makes a casual discarding gesture. Something small and round drops at his feet. He rotates his left wrist, lowering his gun and nudging Weiss with the back of his right hand, and snaps the fingers on his left with a sharp, metallic ring.

A rapid series of quiet popping sounds go off all over the arena. They coincide with the entry elevators opening again, another dozen Moas in rank and file ascending into the arena --

-- and then into the air, gently drifting inside a faintly blue-tinted bubble-like haze, utterly immobile. The exterior of the field ripples with a grid pattern in white light that rolls in circles around the edges. Identical fields go off across the near side of the ravine, blanketing the area around the pod in stasis fields, holding anyone unfortunate enough to be inside one just off the ground and in a tight press of immobility.

Weiss may detect momentary weightlessness, but it vanishes after a fraction of a second. They're standing in one, but the two of them are unaffected. It ought to buy some time for them to bail.

The Cephalon announcer is, of course, flipping his proverbial shit.
Zwei ||Typical, I suppose.||
<<They don't tend to learn, no.>>
||Assessing weapon escalation.||
<<Nah, not necessary. Looks like our guy has it figured out by now. It'll be costlier to fight than stall at this point, and I still don't know how resynthesis will fare.>>
||Rerouting majority power to Personal Interdiction Field, then. Maximum attenuation scale.||
<<Looks like I'm almost done here~>>

    On Weiss' end, she turns back to verbal communication when the Betrayer indicates the full extent of technical failures with his . . . sssuuuit? There's organics in there. <<"Sheesh. That's going to be a pain. Don't worry, I'll get you fixed up once we've ditched these- speak fo the devil.">> Weiss stares down Kushiko instead, largely through the peripheral sensor feed, though she has to turn her lack-of-a-face to her in order to actually give the impression she's looking.

    <<"Real sorry you lost, you mean? Really. You're looking for some kind of long lost brother, so the first thing you do is enter a death match with prize money for killing him? Alongside a career mercenary and assassin, and a clearly bloodthirsty nutcase who's already tried to kill the poor guy. Sorry, but I'm not buying it~ I think this is a lame attempt to get us to lower our guard. You won't even put down the gun, and neither of us are properly armed. As far as I know, you're just another treasure hunter, wandering around and shooting people for money, tech, and trinkets. I wouldn't expect solidarity out of you~">> Her tone could not be more subtly disingenuous, and yet intentionally biting, leaving no doubt as to whom is the bad guy in this narrative she's weaving, even as the snow turns blood red.

    In stark contrast, Asche is having none of Note's shit. His forward strides remain measured, even, and consistently non-intensive, and he produces no weapons nor takes any further swings at her. On the surface, his path seems more or less irrelevant. He does this while weathering the martial artist's (literally) bloody assault with a posture that can only seem apathetic due to permanently lacking facial features. Where she swirls around his hulking frame, her chops and strikes land on various surfaces that genuinely hurt to be punching.

    There are no conveniently exposed wires or typically unarmoured joints here, like some B-grade mecha anime. It's flat black plating that feels like punching the side of a building-sized diamond, with a subsurface layer of faint, hexagonal iridescence that fills with ripples of tesselating white light where the blows land, letting off sparse jumps of pale sparks, despite the eerie lack of haptic feedback that can't be rationalized with numb hands. ||"Worthy of whom?"|| Asche rumbles.

    The facade of invincibility is stringently maintained for almost a full minute, navigating around snow, crags, and catwalks, right up until the Betrayer makes his last series of gestures, where Asche very abruptly stops. Specifically, he stops /just/ short of one of the stasis field emitters, in a tiny deadzone between adjacent devices, as what is certainly a planned move to get Note to fly right into one.

    Knowing that the others are going to be hard pressed to approach her with one surrounding her and the Betrayer, Weiss lets herself relax just enough to fire off <<"There's the bell~ Too little too late, wannabe. Better luck next time~!">> before, all factors willing, she, the Betrayer, and the pods the Corpus had dropped into the arena, wink out in a crackle of bent light. If this throws the whole Index event into chaos, all the better. They can always blame Tenno scum, after all.
Note     IGNORING Note is something she's finding downright INFURIATING, but after the first ten seconds of heavy kicks and speedy chops doing little to either get Asche's attention OR slow the hulking machine down... she's getting pissed.

    On the verge of flipping her lid at him, in fact.

    But after one last frustrated kick, seeing that he's not even GOING towards any of her allies or anything important anymore, she uses the rebound to SPRING away, somersault spectacularly through the air and disengage. She can HEAR the elevators on the move after all, and decides that with everything going WONKY...

    Yeah, she just flies straight off towards the dome's ceiling in a huff to get a better look at the full battlefield!

    "Alright, what's going on here." The youth grouches out to herself, bloodied arms folding. Almost as an afterthought, she curls her tail 'round her waist securely.

    And now that she's away from the battle, she starts checking over her wounds with what attention she can spare, mostly just BREATHING.

    But without her jacket, this clime is kind of a problem. "N-nothing going on here makes any sense! W-who runs DEATHMATCHES... that's c-crazy!" Yep. Starting to shiver a little.
Kushiko Yeah, the tech shoved in him... that burst of static she got before, that was vastly, overwhelmingly angering to her. Fury flows off of her frame like cold smoke, even if there is no outward sign of it, it's something that can be /felt/. The only thing keeping her from assailing Weiss and to an extent, Asche right now is the sign language she picks up from from the Betrayer. Her fellow Tenno.

What mockery have they done to you?

And then Weiss talks. And keeps talking. And you know, just keeps. Talking. Everything she says, once it has that moment to completely percolate. It takes a lot, and we do mean a lot to actually hit certain buttons for Kushiko, when it gets right down to it.

<"You don't know anything."> is the eerie, sinisterly calm voice. And in this moment, this instance of personal failure, something in Kushiko isn't really Kushiko anymore. The only reason, and we do mean the only reason Weiss doesn't find herself at being immediately trained on by that instrument of rapidfire bullshit is the stasis traps that the so-called 'Betrayer' has set up. Who she recognizes for being a fellow Tenno, no matter what Weiss paints in a narrative.

Regardless, she has to somersault out of it, immediately and completely. <"For as much you're spewing, you need to pile on as much of a lie as you claim me to be."> she seethes. Enough of this. Enough of everything, beyond it all. There's a part of her that was trying to be nice about this, trying to, oh, we don't know, be considerate with regards to other people, with this Multiverse.

That part has checked out at this point.

This part ignores Weiss' monumental heaping of lies and things people like it or her or whatever they are say in a situation like this. Before that teleport has a chance to get off, she immediately drops into her Peacemaker stance, and between Asche and Weiss?

Absolute enormous, beyond belief amounts of firepower erupts from her. 'Parting shot' in terms of 'parting artillery strike' in gun form. No more words. Just singular, murderous fury the likes of which she's rarely given /reason/ to express. And as much as they may well be gone in the next moment, the sheer disgusting rate of fire she puts out downrange is something to remember. <"Tomoe. Note. Whoever you are. Get out of here."> That's the only warning. Every single MOA is reduced to slag within seconds. She drops from Peacemaker. The elevators from which they emerged from are targeted by her. There's a way for the pair to leave. But anything standing in her way will not have that chance to leave. And she screams--her voice deafening, disembodied and her very presence radiating the brand of GET THE FUCK AWAY like it's rarely done to this degree. Her form, Mesa drops. And a radiant beam, completely rendering any kind of sensor input invalid as she tears her way through the elevator--for a brief instant, one could see something... like a child? But it didn't last long.

And then, she was gone. More than likely to murder and annhilate every single Corpus that wanted to come up here.
Tomoe Tomoe has the guy down she doesn't move to finish him off, she just wants to get this done and out of here. She now turns her attention to what else is going on as she flares, her wings out again. She turns her attention now to the remaining foes. She takes a look at Weiss for a moment. She stares at Weiss for a moment she is thinking about her next option.
% She looks over to Note.

She sees Note's not dead, good she also sees she's out of things for the most part and now it comes down to this doesn't it?

"Moa's are going wild it's time to go Note!"

She is now taking to the air.

She's seen what Kushiko can do and she wonders how did someone chain a Tenno like this? It's honestly horrifying more so than the killing power of the Tenno. The Tenno chose their jobs, having someone using them like this?

She is about to shoot her mouth off at Zwei then outright stops. She hears what Kushuiko has said how she said it.

"Note we are leaving!"

She will rapidly move to scoop up Note if she needs to and get the heck out of here she trusts in Kushiko to handle this and there's not much more she can do, she does not want to get caught in what Kushiko is letting loose.
Zek The 'Betrayer' is unable to cut in and say anything about whatever Weiss is talking about. He looks between her and the Mesa nearby, back and forth, as if trying to puzzle something out. Whatever it is, he doesn't seem to be able to do it. He takes a half-step back towards the cryopod instead, sliding a foot backwards and subtly lifting one arm away from his side like he was trying to more physically cover it.

This turns out to be a good decision. The Mesa opens up on the one offering a way out, and it's four rapid-fire shots before he makes the decision to step out in front of the firepower just long enough for the red glow to ferry them away. Incoming shots hammer into his recharged shields, lasting just long enough that the last before they're gone dents armor as it shatters the protective energy field. He's staggering when he and the pod disappear.

Corpus walkers start to steadily rise up into the arena, seemingly intent on overwhelming the other Tenno. The stasis fields collapse seconds after the second wave arrived, releasing the imprisoned. The field becomes a mess of laser-fire and fills with the mechanical cries of the odd walkers.

A green marker flickers into sight on maps and comm devices, leading towards a nearby airlock. It's time to go.
Note     No need to tell Note twice about leaving today! Seeing the Moas and Corpus flood in and seem DECISIVELY unfriendly... Note's decided she's ended up in the WRONG arena for today. VERY wrong. Despite all the pain she's in, she sees Tomoe swooping around down below and Kushiko handling herself... and kind of heading off forthings that make Note shiver. Having put two and two together at this point, she scrunches up her shoulders in distaste at this whole mess...

    And sucks in a breath.

    "KAI-O-KEN... TIMES FIVE!!" In her weakened state, using this technique's a bit risky. Her arms and legs shake and tremble and tight muscles ripple... but she gathers her roiling Ki and ROCKETS down along with Tomoe at freakish speeds, heading straight for the elevators.

    It... really doesn't matter HOW many Moas or soldiers are in her way now. Or even if the elevator is in her way. She just BRUTE FORCES straight through it all like a crimson meteor that doesn't give a **** that something's in its way. Metal is torn out of the way. Walls are busted through! Soldiers are batted aside and into walls. Moas are torn to ribbons with kicks and chops and ki blasts before they can even get a LOCK on her.

    She's fleeing straight to the warp gate she came in on.