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Starbound Flotilla     THE LINE

    A name for an unusual zone in the multiverse, The Line is a well-defined territory that isn't a result of a unification. Rather, it seems to have been carved long after. It cuts miles-wide but relatively thin territory directly and precisely westward over the whole face of the multiversal superplanet, parallel to sea level, punching through tall mountains and soaring over massive canyons. Out here in Second Gear, wind conditions, specialized mods, and other such circumstances allow modestly sized flotillas of airships, land-trains, and other vehicles to surge ever-westward. The rolling convoy of small settlements out here in the Southern Reaches of the Line make for a waystation as one tries to merge northwards towards Third Gear. It slides over a smooth, eye-opening horizon of pure glass, blasted by repeated rushes of plasma over many, many years; the shifting landscape almost seems to churn below the island-like settlements as it moves by at hundreds or thousands of miles per hour.

    Merging is the plan today. The Flotilla's Linerunner, a heavy, three-story-tall super-tank of some sort, with heavy rocket thrusters at the back and a mishmash of insane enhancements picked up from scavenging efforts on the Line, has acquired a hood ornament recently, a boar tusk that offers its supernatural speed-enhancement to the entire body of the vehicle. Others have received offers where necessary to fit their vehicles with hover gear, receive personal hover equipment, and have other enhancements like loaner grappling hooks, all to help them match speeds and cover the Flotilla as they head north.

    They're escorting a pair of fuel delivery vehicles. The first is Hexane's ultracoal delivery, and the glowing cowboy is still atop his train, ready to deal with raiders. The second is a surging landship that cuts towards the North. Weiss, of the Zwei unit, has managed to convince them that they're a Hylotl, and as such, they've managed to negotiate passage to a Hylotl mobile city posted out to the southern Third Gear to harvest flecks of unspeakably dense diamond-like structure.

    The hope is to merge before the Treasure zips by here again; allegedly, barbarians and raiders settle down and bunker up when the Treasure comes by, to keep from suffering its rush of heat and pressure. So the rockets are blazing, and folks are as always invited aboard if they want to work for this effort to grab that treasure eventually. The distorted forms of large accelerated cities zoom by in Third Gear, a ways north of where the Flotilla are currently. There's still a little more distance and a lot more acceleration before they can merge lanes with it.
Riva Banari Riva's on Hexane's craft, hunkered down in preparation for the Merge. She's watching the Novakid's back, munching on some snacks while she waits for the festivities to begin. Since the main method of attack appears to be boarding combat (ballistic calculations must be /insane/ in the Line), Riva is prepared to interdict and show some unruly hooligans a thing or two.

Or maybe nothing will happen and she can place Speed Poker with Hexane or something. That'd be cool too.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang's here! Astride her trusty motorbike. It's fitted with some modular hovertech to keep pace with the flying vehicles. She's got a modified helmet on, giving her full face protection from the rushing wind, and letting her breathe, of course. She falls into formation with the convoy, crowing merrily over radio. "This is Firechild, I'm on your four o'clock, if anything comes knocking, lemme know and I'll knock back!"
Corona Arclite Corona has been making nice with the Novakids in the settlement, sharing notes over booze and vittles (and whatever living plasmoid gas folks eat. No judging). That and she has plenty of experience with the Traintop Battle trope. So it's probably little surprise that she has joined Hexane and Riva about the starman's hyperspeed express. In addition to the loan-out gear from the Flotilla she's dressed in some heavier clothing than usual to avoid things like high speed air friction and what not, and magnetic boot/spurs to avoid any unhappy accidents like falling off.
Dexter Arkwright After staying behind last time, Dexter Arkwright is present here today, inside his Venture Suit spacesuit-like flight suit. He has two guns, a handgun and a revolver, both at his side, as well as a bag full of his supplies and equipment. Currently, he's flying alongside the Linerunner, keeping an eye out for hostiles so that he can shouldercheck them with super thruster speed. Over the radio system, he communicates publicly, curious about something.

"So, while we're working on this...what do you guys think the treasure is? It's certainly fiery, so is it some sort of vehicle, maybe? To be going so fast?"
Kotone Yamakawa The Line has proven to be a very strange place, but it was exciting as it was strange and in the end? Kotone was down with that. She was as ever working with Corona and hacd checked out the Nova Kid settlement as well just mostly taking in things and enjoying herself in the lulls they did have. She was also amused they were fighting on trains or possiblky so for rather appealed to some part of her. Maybe it was due to a western she saw as a kid? who knows she's not even sure. Rather than stealth gear she's wering a fairly heavy suit of armour today and has made use of mag boots as well so she reduces the chances of falling off herself.
Leyanne Leyanne is covering the Linerunner. She patrols up and down the deck, sans her Bushmaster today; she's still mourning the loss of that cannon... especially considering its usefulness both in anti-light-armour and anti-personnel roles. Today, she's carrying a truly colossal 25mm gatling cannon, supported by a chunky articulated arm that harnesses it to her waist, just like the Bushmaster.

"Hell if I know." She radios back to Dex as she walks the gunwales. "I'm just here because Ko and Corona said there was adventure this way and they might want a bud along the way."
Zwei     As much as it matters, Weiss is still a Hyotl today. That means beneath her uncannily featureless helmet, she has white amphibious skin, dainty side fins, and three bright green eyes. That's how obscenely convoluted space camo works. Holding a static image and basic morphic skin traits is actually easier than adaptive concealment. Asche is still Asche, because you don't fiddle with the aesthetics of a hulking black MBT/crusader hybrid with clawed and reverse jointed limbs like something from hell.

    The former has a brain in a jar. This is a thing. It is a capsule with silver caps on both ends and illuminated blue fluid inside, suspending a chunk of gooey grey matter between it, and apparently slowly releasing some kind of pink-grey dust into the solution, adhering to the brain tissue surface and building up in little fronds. This seems like an odd thing to bring along, especially since it isn't remotely radiation shielded, and Weiss climbs right out onto the roof of the Linerunner and anchors herself with the electromagnets in her boots.

    Asche is actually with the Hyotl landship though, considering he's already needed to gib people and also dragons away from it before. He seems to be checking through the cycling parts of his wrist weapon, not quite having the freedom to shapeshift it at will, but seemingly satisfied with a rotary assembly of a laser aperture, rail prongs, launch tube, and some glowy hooked thing suspiciously similar in aesthetics to the Starbound Flotilla's Matter Manipulator, having taken some direct inspiration. Ports on the back of his shoulders pop, and a scatter of black marbles sprays out, firing tiny carbon tethers to latch onto the landship, and then begin pulsing the area with wide, sweeping beams of scanning waves, focusing them into tall and thin 'sensor walls', but being numerous enough that there aren't really helpful gaps between them. It's basically a radar net to catch incoming hostiles in a wide enough radius that he'll have time to maneuver away from and back to the landship as necessary.

    <<"The real treasure is the friends you made along the way.">> Weiss assures Dexter, lightly shaking the brain. She stomps on the roof of the Linerunner twice, then says <<"Merge when ready, cap'n!">>
Staren     Staren returns in his machine. This is the last time he'll be able to do this /casually/ -- Higher speeds are going to require careful coordination, and once they're past escape velocity he'll have to work out something else, but for now it's still practical to bring the mech for high-speed, vehicle-based combat! Instead of trying to chase the Linerunner and provide support pincering enemies from behind, though, this time his mecha stands on the deck, half-transformed, ready to act as a mobile turret that can deploy as long as the atmosphere's speed is within about 2 1/2 times the speed of sound of Linerunner's.
Starbound Flotilla     Those on the lookout for incoming foes, with eyes out, sensors sharp, and intuitions active, get a short warning before what comes next. Something streaks out of the sky, landing hard and immobile up ahead of the Linerunner. The impact kicks up a huge burst of glass dust up into the air, obscuring on both radar and vision what appears to be a ten-foot-tall or so mass. It looks for a moment like whatever foolish thing just landed right in front of this group is about to be trampled to death immediately as they crash over it at blistering speed, but only for a moment; something sounds like a nearby bomb going off when it accelerates to Second Gear straight out of standstill, leaving the Linerunner and those atop it to deal with the swift, lacerating damage of the glass-dust explosion it left behind.

    Hexane calls out, "NORTHBANDER!" And the glowing cowboy is already opening fire on the shape. Massive rockets blaze bright white to further obscure sight of the thing that races quickly ahead of them, before leaping into the air and landing hard on the deck of the Linerunner. The shape is like a knight, or more accurately a samurai, gleaming with hyperglass finishes throughout its body to replace where metal ought to be in a full set of bulky, high-speed power-armor. It bristles with dozens of thrusters all throughout its body, rather than one main one, and the glass in its body hums with flickering light that seems to conduct up and down it in a barely-contained way.

    A pure hyperglass katana is drawn into a defensive, challenging stance, and a voice with a Hylotl accent speaks. The samurai's helmet obscures the voice, but it sounds gruff, deep, and harsh. "By the decree of the High Priestess of the Holy Combusion, all who serve the Engine King are forbidden to pass to the heretic's aid. The King's schemes will starve. Decelerate and stand clear of her prize, or be purged in its heat." He's giving one warning, but it seems the plan is for only one. He has that tense posture of someone who will attack immediately if they keep accelerating or if they strike back.
Staren     What the hell? 'Northbander'? Oh, right... The Star Hawk turns crouches and brings its shield to bear. Against this sort of attack, in this position, it can avoid the worst of the damage, though there's a little damage to the shield emitter. He takes aim at the strange figure, but since it isn't attacking yet, he hears it speak...

    He'd have been better off just shooting it. He doesn't need to wait for the Captains' decision -- obviously, they're not going to give up this far, so there's no point in wasting time on words if he might have any element of surprise at all. the enemy has so many people to watch, and his weapons are already aimed...

    The laser rifle in the mecha's right hand pulses three times in the blink of an eye.
Leyanne Leyanne blinks as the alert is called, her armour tanking most of the shards of glass - though her antennae take a few nicks, causing the mouse to cuss loudly and swear. She snarls loudly, jogging to the front of the ship and taking aim at the glass-samurai Northbander. "I got only one thing to say to you!" She shouts in reply to the challenge "And that's this!"

Her gatling gun tick-clacks up to speed before letting out a loud, flatulent burst of noise, a cone of flame almost as tall as the mouse erupting from the barrel as the mouse fires a rain of 25mm hi-ex (and some tracer) at the bandit.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang gets that 'shock line' as her Aura triggers danger sense. She looks up as the Northbander comes crashing down, and takes a full blast of that glass dust to the face. Her Aura flares, protecting her from the absolute worst of it, but she's got some cuts along her exposed legs and arms, and some cuts through her outfit. "What's the plan guys?" she asks, then grins behind her visor.

    Yang then guns the engine on her bike, pouring power through the modular hoverplates to boost forward. She rises up and over, then ratchets back one arm, aiming to launch an explosive bolt from her gauntlet at the samurai-like mech thing. The little packet of energy wibbles and distorts as it flies, and detonates like a grenade on impact with any surface.
Starbound Flotilla     The first laser blast catches the hyperglass mecha dead on. The next two slip along its blade in a deft, stylish parry that shows off the traditional Hylotl motion. "First Sea Hylotl Style: Light Dancing in Water." And then the sun that shines overhead seems to gleam along its blade. More and more, the reflection upon it intensifies, and eventually breaks into a full glow as the Hylotl in power armor leaps high up, with massive, dramatic flipping flourishes, and tries to slam the sword heavily from overhead onto Staren's mecha's shield, hoping to use that impact to overload systems and rattle the pilot within! "Actions without words are thoughts without conviction. Purge." The blade lets out a blast of fire when it impacts, whatever it hits! That hyperglass isn't even remotely fragile, it seems, but it sure is fast.
Riva Banari Riva's watching, which means she gets a moment to react when the assault comes. The moment the impact lands, Riva drops her snacks, losing them to the blurred land of the Line. She twists her expression into a frown... But also rolls to the side immediately, dipping down to use the technique Hexane used for these situations earlier, using the train itself to shield against the glass-dust as it rakes actoss the area.

After it passes, she pops her head up. "The hell?" She says, looking around to see the massive hyperglass opponent. "Heh. Well, looks like a new challenger has arrived." She strolls forward, pulling her Ajoran Cross out of her Agartha storage area and whistles. "Tooooooooooo bad!" She calls out to the Samurai. "We're doin' this. LET'S GO, SHINY SAMURAI!" With a yell, she leaps onto a hover-runner and boosts forward, charging the thing like a knight on her steed, except she's on a super fast hoverbike and she's using an anchor-like hammer instead of a lance.

It's SUPER AWESOME.
Dexter Arkwright Something's coming. Dexter has no idea what it is as it lands and gets impacted by the Linerunner, as he flies overhead, but he moves to grab his gun...right as the glass-dust explosing flies forward. It buffets the Venture Suit, making cuts in the armor and slicing up Dexter, who wasn't expecting that. He forces himself to keep flying through the storm, though he almost crashes in the process, and grabs his gun as the enemy reveals itself - an armored warrior.

Raising the revolver, Dexter moves to land on the Linerunner, taking a moment to figure out ballistics before moving to fire at the Northbander. The shot is highly accurate, moving to try and find chinks or exposed parts of the armor, somewhere a measly revolver bullet can do a lot of damage. "Actions without words are bad, huh? Then here's some words for you - my name's Dexter Arkwright, and you're not going to stop me from getting this treasure! Take this, fishfreak!"

Hopefully, Moonfin isn't /too/ offended by that, as Dexter hopes he can contribute to the fight with his gunfire.
Starbound Flotilla     Yang's heavy bolt strikes close, but not quite close enough. The samurai's movements are so fast that the time between the bolt striking them and the explosion of the bolt itself allows the mecha to get at least a few feet back. What the hell! Why are they so FAST! The blast of cracking glass races along their body, which seems to release a strange, unnerving light from within it. This means the armored foe's dodge transitions cleanly into a dive off the edge of the Line Runner; the armor "slams" into the ground with a hovering "shockwave", and then slashes away at the glass below, cutting a fresh gash in it, and this time quite concentrates the shards of glass meant to pick up in the wind and barrage Yang with a much more brutal rush of those tiny slashes.
Zwei     If Weiss weren't wearing a whole bunch of armour, the extremely flashy entry of the Engine King's apparent rival would get even her turning around and putting her hands over her face. Instead, she has to turn the brain capsule away and bodyblock the spray of hyperglass fragments, shattering to fine dust and scoring hundreds of narrow lines across the exterior curves of her suit, flickering with pulses of light beneath the surface that look like a rainfall graphic considering how many hits there are.

<<Wow. Rude.>>
||For a Hyotl, yes.||
<<And here I was hoping we could all get along.>>
||Considering the propensity for sapient races to hate those even slightly dissimilar to themselves, I had doubted it from the start.||
<<Yeah, who am I kidding. These people are all nuts anyways. I need to get him out of the way first before the treasure comes around. Gotta get some exposure to that lovely radiation if I'm gonna make any progress here.>>

    <<"Unlikely!">> says Weiss, still using the Hotyl language and voice simulation. <<"I will not listen to the words of one too crude and lacking in sophistication to challenge me, this convoy's champion, to honourable one on one combat! You have brought down upon you expactly what you deserve in attempting to butcher my subordinates, barbarian!">> The space at Weiss' hip warp red, and then she is clutching some kind of futuristic carbon saya, etched with gold, hard-angled designs, exposing the complicated techy hilt of a deep black curved sword.

<<Soooo, the old RAISER blade pair didn't get fully charged, did it?>>
||Negative. All weapons are currently running on purchased surplus munitions or E-batteries.||
<<Figures. How much time is left on this one?>>
||Thirty eight point four milliseconds at a stretch. Charging mount has an additional one point two eight six seconds.||
<<Well, I'll just have to be efficient with it I guess. I'm prepared to light them up from the landship, right?>>
||Correct. Plasma missile tone is green.||
<<Cool. I did warn him I wouldn't be /that/ honourable.>>

    The brain canister disappears into purple hammerspace. Apparently intent on playing this whole thing up to the hilt, Weiss crouches low with her hand on the hilt of her blade, and then teleport-lunges forward in a way studiously similar to the 'blink' tech Moonfin uses, albeit significantly faster, leaving a bright ribbon of gold light in her wake as she blitzes between the mecha's legs, ankle to ankle. The ribbon is in fact the only evidence she'd drawn the thing at all, as she resolves with the blade already in its 'scabbard'. The supersonic bang that follows her trail can't even catch up to the speed of the swing, at even the thin air in second gear explodes into a rippling chain of popping plasma cavities. The saya lets off a faint, electronic whine, and its etched designs light up, recharging the spent sword placed back into it.
Starbound Flotilla     After landing so heavily below, Leyannes blasts of gatling gun fire come with a heavy bonus from being on the high ground. While the Northern Samurai can block much of the barrage, too much leaks through for comfort. "Violence without philosophy is the language of barbarians. It is a language I understand fluently, and which I will never speak." A heavy crouch, and then a ROCKET-BLASTED JUMP that's almost impossible to see as it rises! "Sixth Sea Hylotl Style: Lightning Rising From Waves." It's a heavy attempt to sort of uppercut Leyanne clean over to the other side of the Linerunner, before it lands again between the train and the Linerunner!
Staren     They react fast enough to /parry individual laser pulses/?! It takes longer for Staren to realize what happened than for it to happen. And then this small figure attacks a forty-foot mecha in hand-to-hand combat! Staren's not usually on the /receiving/ end of this sort of thing! The Star Hawk is pushed back. The damage is... the shield flickers as the emitter strains, the feet scrape on the surface of the Linerunner. It's not /terribly bad/ but it's not something he can just shrug off -- but perhaps worse than the damage is the realization that this is a fight his mech really isn't suited for.

    "Screw off! You know nothing about me!" he shouts over the speakers, taking to the air and raining down missiles, turning the area around the Hylotl into plasma. Trying to make there nowhere they can dodge to...!

    Also unloading the missile packs so he can drop them for weight and mobility. He needs every advantage he can get.
Corona Arclite "HEADS DOWN!" Corona's already got her goggles on thankfully, but drops and hunkers on the train roof to minimize the amount of body surface she has exposed to the blistering dust storm. REally REALLY glad she wore some protective gear for this little adventure! Even with that, the ends of her coat flail about wildly in the rush of dust and wind, and she's grabbing her hat with one hand to keep it from being blown off.

By the time that's passed and she's getting back on her feet (again, yay for magnetic boots) some super samurai has jumped onto the Linerunner and is picking a fight with the others. The duster continues to flutter off to one side as she gives her hat a dramatic tug down by the brime. "Ah don't reckon who you are, or what's crawled up yer equivilent fer a backside."

There's an audible click-clack as in the smooth grace one would expect of a gunslinger she pulls a gun from her belt and cracks off a quick shot at the samurai in in the process of drawing the weapon. It's not really that powerful of a technique, but boy does it look cool and dramatic!

"But don't take kindly to messin' with my hombres either way."
Yang Xiao Long     Yang tchs. "I wish Ruby were here, she'd be able to keep up with that bastard." she muses to herself, cycling in the next shell with a flick of her wrist as she tries to track the movement of the power suit. Somehow, using intuition and a whole lot of luck, she manages to bunker down, bringing her limbs behind the heavy frame of her bike. The glass shards bounce off the heavy frame, doing minimal damage to the machine and missing the girl completely.

    "You talk too much." she retorts at the Hylotl warrior, gunning the engine once the storm passes and switching her bike to 'station keep'. She then stands up on the foot pegs and slams her fists together. "Alright then. Way of the Huntress: Flurry of Blows!" she attempts, launching a barrage of those same explosive bolts. Each one very mildly guided toward the target, but very easy to 'lose', especially for a high speed target.
Starbound Flotilla     The Northern Samurai's hover systems hold out against the impact, but it forces it too close to Riva for its own comfort, skidding back from the lancing strike and set off-guard. "'Shiny Samurai'. Hmph. I am Her holy servant, the Saint of Glass. There is nothing of me that is without substance." And the thing tries to strafe hard to one side, roaring with the effort, intent on slamming Riva, bike and all, straight under the treads of the heavy Linerunner! She's the group tank, and it seems the Saint of Glass has no compunctions about making her suffer for that role.
Leyanne Leyanne takes the hit, hard. It knocks her back, sending her sliding across the deck. But the big mouse is strong, and heavy, so she slows quite fast. She snarls, slinging up her cannon, and grabbing a grappling hook from a nearby member of the Linerunner's crew. Then a second. The first hook she fires at the samurai... although she's not intending it to be the primary part of her attack. As soon as it digs in she begins reeling it in... either his boot-jets will keep him still, or they won't. Either way, the mouse streaks towards her target, straightening her legs out as if she were going to deliver a drop-kick, aimed roughly at the Saint of Glass' chest.

Whether she impacts or not, as soon as the kick is complete the mouse fires her second grappling hook back at the Linerunner, hoping to reel herself back on board before she can hit the ground. Bouncing at this speed would suck ass. And she really doesn't fancy being the first survivor of glass-rash...
Kotone Yamakawa "You don't have to tell me twice!" She calls out to Corona. Kotone ducks down and doesn't seem bothered by the lack of goggles on her end. She already got her footing back up on her feet again and she'll join Corona in opening fire in turn. "You really had to get with this and don't you know the era of Samurai ended?" She fires not trying to look cool or show off unlike her friend, with only the intent to hit the attacker with rounds from her assault rifle.
Starbound Flotilla     "Arkwright. I care little for the names of any who would serve a heretic whose only vision is instability. The Line must continue, never finish; if you intend to help the Engine King, you will never find me anywhere but in your path." The Saint of Glass says, with urgent, tense tones, bringing an arm up to try to shield the vulnerable gaps in armor that Dexter has found, and bent his bullets into. At this high of a speed, air resistance turns into an incredibly valuable trick-shot vector! Unfortunately it also means that the well-experienced Samurai can do something as absurd as sling his katana straight at Dexter, and have it even return to his side as it flips through the wind-torn air. "Sixth Sea Hylotl Style: Wake of Eternal Seas."
Riva Banari "Saint of Glass? Nice name. I mean, you're beautiful, really. I can appreciate the kind of craftsmanship that it must take to make something like that, and I've seen a lot of glasswork-OH CRAP!" The casual tone suddenly disappears with a yelp as she is crashed aside, hammering right down into the treads of the Linerunner!

THUMP THUMP.

Holy crap, what the hell just happened to Riva? Did she just...

A grapple line whines, and a sparking, sizzling hoverbike rises as the machine spools speed back up using the Linerunner for a boost again. Riva herself looks disheveled now, bruised and bleeding. You know, kind of like if someone got ran over by a car. A car that wasn't a giant tank treaded thing going at the speed of Eurobeat. "Now that just wasn't nice." Riva mutters. "I can't abide that." With a surge, Riva drives right back in, swerving back and forth as she charges right back in towards the Saint of Glass! "You might have substance, but you're still made of glass. And as much as it pains me, I'ma gonna have to break you now."

This time, Riva comes in hot and fast, charging straight in. There's no subtlety, just a burning light surging from the weapon as she swings for the Saint's leg. On impact, the strike is bad enough, but the energy rumbles out, creating a rippling shockwave that might threaten to do more..
Starbound Flotilla     While this foe may be fast, they aren't as fast as teleportation, or the speed of Zwei's thought. A zippy, swift effort to deconstruct them, disguised as classic Hylotl teleportation technology, leaves the machine damaged crucially at its ankles, creating a faltering, failing look in its hovering. "Honor was abandoned the moment you chose to serve a man whose only vision is mediocrity, when you agreed to grant passage to those whose cowardice overcomes their ambition. The Engine King's schemes must never come to fruition. The Line must never finish." The power armor demonstrates a profoundly stylish maneuver as it flips several times, even handspringing directly on the raw glass, to leap high into the air, trailing melted hyperglass and then drawing a blade from his side to send hurtling to the ground with a force more like a meteor, intent on matching Weiss' efforts and trying to punish the attack with a fine hyperglass kunai targeted for the joints.
Starbound Flotilla     Staren's massacre brutalizes the samurai as they land on the deck, unsteady and bleeding molten glass from the legs. It's a harmless area of the deck to bombard from above, the Flotilla build Decktop Combat Zones for just such purposes and Staren knows it. It's not good for someone to be in when bombarded, the impacts are impossible to dodge or slice down, and the man can be heard grunting in intense pain as the barrage crashes through his body. When it's done, his armor is cracked all over in strange ways... But he's used this as a chance to gather himself. "I know you well enough." And then he takes a strange, almost zen posture, baring his armor's palm directly to Staren. Something odd is leaking out of the hyperglass armor...

    "Be still."

    The word is spoken, and a shockwave of light blasts out of his palm, intended to wash over the Starhawk and limit its systems, ideally slowing it badly with some kind of inhibitor energy, trying to get that heavy damage limited, while damaging a few others on its way in!
Dexter Arkwright As the Saint of Glass responds to Dexter, he frowns inside his helmet as soon as the Hylotl says that he 'serves' someone else. As the sword flies straight at him, Dexter brings up his arms to block it, diminishing the strike but still taking some decent damage as it slices into his armor and the force of the blade sends him jerking back, almost off of the Linerunner from the wind pressure. "Agh...you're good, but you're wrong! I don't serve anyone but myself!" The thrusters start to ramp up on the Venture Suit, as Dexter decides now is a good time to monologue a little. "My philosophy is that if you want something, you have all the rights to seek it, and whether or not you're capable is all that matters! So whether or not I'm working with this Engine King is irrelevant, because I want the treasure, and I have the capability to grasp it! Instead of talking about him, talk about me, the one you'll remember for kicking your ass!"

Finally, Dexter leaps and flies forward, the thrusters shooting him straight at the Saint of Glass, as he raises his fist and tries to impact him with a powerful punch, Superman-style. "Take this!"
Zwei <<Oh so he's one of /those/.>>
||Plasma missiles.||
<<Plasma missiles.>>

    Weiss stands and turns from her end crouch in a single, snappy movement, but the 'Saint of Glass' is the first opponent Zwei has handled in quite a while who actually demonstrates similar speed and manoeuvrability at that size, and they aren't about to up-clock their processes to deal with it at the moment. Weiss has enough economy of motion to plan and then execute a slight turn that puts the saya right where the kunai is just before it hits, splitting it into a couple of jagged fragments that slash and spang from her armoured shins and thighs instead of slamming into her knee joint, causing the lights in the scabbard to flicker briefly. Minimal damage, but still much closer than Zwei would like.

    She does this instead of teleporting however, because the guidance systems in her helmet are locked onto the Saint of Glass as he whizzes about the battlefield surrounding the Linerunner, triangulated with Asche's sensor beads. Keeping him invisibly 'painted' with an alpha spectrum to not just scatter off his glass exterior (actually kind of clever to plate a mech in hyperglass, in retrospect), she maintains the lock while a short salvo of miniature missiles shriek into perspective from far away, their noise lagging behind them, steered by quartets of angled burners in their rears that result in them being swerving points of fire rather than leaving rocket exhaust contrails. They split into two smaller pods, and angle in on the Hyotl from near-opposite directions, blowing up in relatively small, more highly concentrated blasts, to deal with the high temperature resilience of the material.

||S-1 through S-12 away. Castling position.||
<<Roger roger!>>
Starbound Flotilla     Corona's quickdraw trickshots may not have a ton of power, but the surprise on them -- with her firing from the side over there -- has a stark and very sudden effect, driving the Saint to one knee for a moment and keeping him from exerting that strange power any further on Staren than he already has. Shit! "I'm the hand of the Priestess of the Empire of the north. I am what will keep the line strong. I am the Saint of Glass." He says, answering Corona; he points his sword directly towards her position on the train, and very abruptly, it's like he's already there in front of her, taking a heavy overhead slice towards her; that light flared in his suit, and his position was changed faster than any jump! "Fourth Sea Hylotl Style: Waves In New Waters." Well, now he's in close range at least!
Starbound Flotilla     The samurai is starting to get destabilized. With many of the thrusters in his legs cut apart by Zwei's assault earlier, it can't stabilize when it tries to dodge around those guided shots, and winds up knocked off by one of the hits, shouting in pain. He slams hard into one of the glass landscape, suffering more damage, before he halts his slowdown by plunging his sword into the side of the train and sort of using that to regain speed. "There is nothing worth saying more than that which will preserve the life and heat of the Line! Be purged!" He stabilizes, and then detatches from the train with a wrenching motion that transitions cleanly into a low sweep; Yang might need to find a creative moment to ramp off the glass or something to dodge a low sweep that wide! "Fifth Sea Hylotl Style: Seafloor Graveyard!"
Staren     It is rapidly becoming clear that the main problem with this opponent is simply that Staren doesn't know what to expect. The delay of not trying to dodge what's coming until he sees it, results in the Star Hawk tumbling backwards through the air and some armor plating getting shockwaved off.

    It rights itself. It drops the four empty missile pods. In a blur of tiny moving parts, it reshapes from a-plane-with-limbs into a humanoid. Staren's not sure what more he can do. His remaining heavy attacks will take too much time to deploy against such a fast-moving target... He's got to turn the tables on this guy. Rattle him.

    Staren has an idea. Zwei's plasma missiles help. With a thought, he reprograms some of his equipment. In one smooth motion, the mecha draws its beam sword and swings. But... the blade isn't cohering. The plasma spreads out, merges with Zwei's. And then a powerful electric current is run through it!

    He doesn't need a clean hit. He just needs a graze!
Yang Xiao Long     Yang sees the sweep coming, but the speed of it leaves her with no time to react and she gets slammed into hard. She nearly comes out of her seat, only just managing to get back in the saddle before impact. She spins out, losing speed rapidly until she manages to get hands back on the bars and turns back into the spin, righting her frame of motion and gunning the engine. She then releases the bars and fires behind her to boost back up to speed again.

    Once she's back in position she guns forward more, closing to melee range with the samurai. "PURGE THIS!" she howls, her hair crackling with electricity and her eyes turning a burning red as she aims to kneecap the armour suit with a round-house haymaker punch.
Starbound Flotilla     Leyanne manages a solid, heavy KICK! The slamming impact crashes into his body, and shoves him hard against the train's side, rattling the whole thing and crunching glass beneath her heels. He groans in pain... And then his eyes light up, and he tries to grab the wrist that's firing the grappling hook back to the Linerunner. "I heard what you did from our human agents of the Southern Wastes. That you take risks of tremendous danger as if they were nothing. Perhaps you are one who could understand the worth of the Line, if only you could see it."

    He rockets up, abruptly. It looks for a moment like he's going to try to spike Leyanne into the glass, but... No, that's not right. He's holding her UP, unless she escapes from it. He's trying to expose her to... Oh shit. Here comes the TREASURE! It's streaking in from the east, moving west fast, and leaving behind a rush of plasma and radiation from its wake. The samurai is going to try to cook her with it! The blast of heat slams into his armor and it only seems to make him BRIGHTER! It concentrates and coalesces on him, the energy from the Line's horrible plasma storms seeming to make him move a little faster.

    If Leyanne doesn't escape it, she might feel its effects surge into her body. The sensation is as burning as it ought to be... But it also comes with a strange sensation. The thrill of the road, of motion, of /going/ and not /stopping/. Unshielded exposure to the plasma storms has some effect... On the mind?
Starbound Flotilla     Wrestling Leyanne into the air will be short-lived though. She'll be able to escape when Kotone peppers the Saint of Glass with blasts of her assault rifle; his grip will weaken, and he'll be forced one way or another to cast Leyanne aside and fire back; hopefully someone like Yang might catch her! His gleaming armor suddenly leaks a gushing sphere of light at Kotone, intent on striking hard with a seemingly unstoppable momentum, trying to knock her off the train!
Corona Arclite And suddenly the Glass Saint is RIGHT IN front of her, towering over the fox with weapon swiftly raised and then striking.

His prescenes barely registers for Corona's reflexes to kick in. She yanks her boots from the train to release the magnetic grip just briefly and jukes to the side... Actually taking advantage of the relative speeds of the train and herself briefly going in different directions. As a result the hyperglass katana slices down, only severing the leather of her duster and a few layers of the brass and crematic fibers lining the inside as protection. And maybe a few hairs off her tail as well. She managed to avoid the super sharp edge by the maunever still sends her tumbling on the traintop until she gets her feet back in order to remagnetize. That was way, way too close for comfort.

As soon as her boots hit the surface of the train the mags relock, haulting her drift a few meters down the length just due to the sheer speeds, and she was only non-magnetized for a few seconds with the roll. "Ya know what 'bout all yer zealot blather?" As she resituates herself the duster, now several inches shorter

Corona turns sideways, pulling a different handgun from her belt as she does so, krackle effect already rippling around the muzzle as she fires off several lancing beams of energy that.. seem to go every way BUT towards the samurai...

Until they all suddenly bend at would normally be impossible angles for beams of energy due to some level of subspace trickery to zero in on glass boy from multiple directions as the Starslinger's homing effect kicks in.

"NO. ONE. CARES."
Leyanne Leyanne wriggles and struggles in the grasp of the Saint, trying to pry his arm off her, but it's just too late. The plasma washes over her, and she gets an eyefull of the radiation directly. She stiffens and and yells out with pain, but... there doesn't really seem to be that much change in her demeanour. "Naw!" She says with a growl. "There's too many different ways to chase the rush out there for me to be /boring/ and settle for just one... oi! Did I say you could throw me? I was bitching at you!"

When he goes to throw her, the mouse's arm bends in a completely unnatural manner to maintain her grip, meaning that she just whiplashes almost straight out away from him. "I need a fulcrum." She growls into her radio. "Moving slightly slower than we are. Fast enough it's not going to rip my tail out, but slow enough that I can use it to give this bastard some /leverage/."

As soon as said fulcrum is provided, whatever form it might take - even if it's passing wildlife - the mouse's tail lashes out and wraps around it. Her feet plant home onto it moments later and she WRENCHES as hard as she can, attempting to slam the Saint into the ground just in front of the Linerunner's tracks.
Starbound Flotilla     Riva appeals to the Hylotl's sense of aesthetics, which can keep it off guard, but sadly that was a little bit ago. And now here she comes again! It's also easily possible to keep such a warrior off guard with violent beatings, which is Riva's second action, and one which manages to knock the faltering warrior out of the air. She clips one of the lower hips as he descends from an attack against Kotone, and that knocks him off balance to slam him hard into the shockwave patterns that split up the ground -- and unfortunately for him, not at an angle that can dislodge Leyanne! OOF! Suddenly, though, light rushes all up and down his body, forcing it to stop slamming into the ground, and giving him enough time to reboot his thrusters. Some sort of immovability pushes hard through his whole body long enough to give him balance and then let him fire back with a lancing, constant laser of light, meant to track Riva's bumper-car shenanigans!
Starbound Flotilla     Dexter's strike is matched. Taking a short moment to stop firing lasers at Riva, the massive samurai uses his free hand -- the one not occupied by Leyanne or his sword -- to sight the incoming foe. He clenches his fist, his's suit's eyes go wide in their glow, and the glass fills with light. "Anything may be sought in the Line. Anything save the end of it. The Empress and the Priestess have nothing but mercy for seekers, and none for those who would Finish the Line." Something about his armor suddenly exudes a sense of UNSTOPPABLE. And he swings his own punch to meet Dexter's!

    The resulting insane high-speed bro-pound tears apart much of the glass on the armor's upper left arm, because unstoppable doesn't mean unbreakable, but it matches the assault with an attempt to break Dexter's own arm in turn!
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa takes a few shots at the Saint of Glass with hrer assault rifle he's forced to let go of Leyanne for a moment ot so it looks to her. Kotone it hit by the spher of light evne as she trie to dodge it, her armour does help somewhat taking some of the force and her mag boots help save her but Kotone ends up /gripping into the train. She will rip up a portion of the train as she goes, yet she stand and up the rifle comes again and Kotone lets out a longer shot this time trying to just keep up the pressure. She also needs to be mindful of getting knockdd off in the middle of this evne her body wouldn't save her from a fall off something going this fast.
Starbound Flotilla     An all-angles attack tears apart the glass along the man's armor, crashing into him with waves of explosive plasma from too many angles to manage. "Ghhhk!" His whole body shudders from the decidedly direct hit, but as it knocks him about, something about him becomes IMMOVABLE as the light leaking out of the cracks and molten segments of his armor flares anew. As the missiles slam into him, he suddenly seems... Unmoved. He's still suffering damage, but it's not stunning him in the least. He somehow manages to point his huge blade directly along the line of alpha-spectrum energy that Weiss is using to paint him.

    Suddenly, he goes from IMMOVABLE to UNSTOPPABLE.

    The shift in light is clear, no less clear than the fact that he's suddenly streaking towards Weiss' position. If they intend to castle, they'd better do it fast, or the smaller unit will have the large blade speared through them. This is vastly overusing the armor's capacity, it seems; it's well over the limit, and leaking the light it contains badly, both inside and out.
Starbound Flotilla     Electricity. The man's zen UNSTOPPABLE state seems to be much like his IMMOVABLE state, where he inflicted that weird effect on his mecha. This means that Staren's blade actually lands its effect, but Staren learns something interesting. Instead of getting the stun effect he was after, he gains some insight into The Line: This UNSTOPPABLE effect appears to be literal. Whatever it is, it seems to have fundamentally resisted an effort to slow it down, but he'll have far more success in IMMOVABLE modes, or in neither. This energy is being drawn from the Line, isn't it? Surely this will bear tremendous fruit when Staren can investigate it later.
Dexter Arkwright As the plasma storm comes forth, Dexter's suit mostly manages to protect him from the washing over heat, though he starts getting dizzy and slowing down a bit, nauseated from the radiation. This staggers him for a short bit, possibly allowing the Saint an additional strike on him. "Hraagh, shut up! If it's so bad to seek the treasure, then atleast tell us what it is, being cryptic doesn't get you anywhere!" Dexter whines, and then his eyes widen as he gets that sense of unstoppability, and the punch comes to meet his. The strike impacts hard, sending a shockwave through Dexter's bones and breaking his arm, causing him to absolutely howl out in pain as he is launched backwards, clutching his arm in pain.

"THAT HURT, HOW DARE YOU!" Dexter screams out, as with his left arm, he lifts it up and slowly staggers to grab - a grappling hook. Firing up the thrusters again, he floats upwards, and jets forward to launch the grappling hook at the Saint of Glass and try and snag onto him, hopefully tripping him up and being carried with him if he flies around.

Dexter's goal is to get pulled in by momentum fast enough and accurately enough to be aiming foot-first into the broken area of the glass on the Saint's armor, and then try and impact as hard as he can into it. He's not a hand-to-hand fighter, but he can still throw a kick, and his mobility /is/ top notch in the suit. If it impacts and the Saint doesn't immediately throw him off, he'll try to throw as many punches with his working arm as he can, all the while howling out screams. It doesn't sound very charismatic, honestly.
Riva Banari "Actually, I wouldn't mind hearing what the other side has to say. But I guess this isn't the venue for it." But the TREASURE roars past at speeds best described as incomprehensible, and the wake of its passage hammers through the area. The plasma storm roils around her, and she throws up an arm to shield her face, but the seething energy doesn't seem to cling to her like it does others. The addictive rush of plasma roars around her, but she remains just as lucid as she always is.

Which is kind of relative. This IS Riva we're dealing with. She turns and comes in for another rush, taking a deadly light beam head on! The impact hits a rippling hexagonal barrier of honey-colored light that seethes around her, blunting but not stopping the constant damage as it sears into her body.

Nevertheless, she yells defiantly and slams forward, working to solve the problem with direct applications of force over basically any other solution. Again and again, she strikes, trying to continue to send shockwaves through the glass to start causing it to fragment and break away.
Starbound Flotilla     Staren doesn't escape unscathed. Not that the man can afford to attack him. He's so exhausted and somewhat disoriented at this stage that the most he can do is try to sort of shoulder-check sideswipe him badly during the pass, something that Staren's rather unlikely to take much damage from.
Starbound Flotilla     Yang rushes forward with a burst of speed. Massive, intense speed, tremendous velocity that's hard to describe and harder to withstand. Her bike's channeled all her work into it, but her fists channel something more important, and something more fundamental. Both, at this stage, work together quite well in cleanly ripping a layer of armor off of the leg of the warrior. He roars, and it vents light out of the glass, shaping a temporary "leg" of sorts to keep him going, but clearly bleeding out majorly from the damage. He roars with anger, trying to barrage Yang with a machine-gun spray of energy blasts as she streaks by, trying to take advantage of her turned back!
Staren     It DIDN'T WORK. At all! Something is up... the shiny samurai or whatever he's called mentioned a priestess. Could that have been divine protection?

    Despite the Hylotl doing little to attack, Staren's kept on the defensive as the Treasure(?!) zooms past and he has to take shelter behind whatever the Linerunner has on deck, or possibly drop down off the opposite side for a moment. The shoulder check scrapes some more plating off the side of the Star Hawk, but it's a small wound in the scheme of things.

    When he pops back out onto the deck, he's still trying to think of a strategy. For the moment, he just fires a burst from the gatling railgun to keep the pressure up, possibly ruining part of the deck. Oops!
Starbound Flotilla     Corona's arcing lights converge, leaving the man struggling badly against the diverse array of impacts that batter him badly. "You understand /nothing/." He declares. "For so many care, so many more than you would know. So many who want the Line's heat in their minds and bodies. So many who want what the Treasure gives them, who want the heat of Holy Combustion, the strength that flows through us that only the light of the Line can give. I defend their way of life, the way of people who seek nothing less than immovability and unstoppability in the soul of their being!" He brings out his own projectiles, flinging a fan of kunai out towards her, ones which explode dangerously as they embed in the ground near her, or even near her body, in dazzling displays of light!
Zwei     The keywords aren't lost of Zwei. Especially not Zwei, of all people. Their primary techbase makes heavy use of infinite inertial frames for higher applications, and so they are very much familiar with the idea, and can easily recognize its telling signs. This is the first time they've seen it apply to actual physical matter, however, which is both incredibly vexing and enthralling.

    A rapid burst of high intensity scans from Weiss confirms what it's seeing through her eyes, and when the 'Saint' lunges down on her, Weiss warps violent, Asche warps red, Weiss appears on the back of the landship at a higher frame of speed, and engages electromagnetic anchors to avoid flying off, Asche appears on the top of the Linerunner at a lower frame of speed, and thus 'falls' away from the oncoming blade, firing a huge boost of forward thrusters to triple his acceleration out of reach, and then an even bigger blast from his back once he clears the edge of the Linerunner to arrest his vector, now hovering behind it, and keeping pace.

    An attack like that against the currently configured interdiction field as an 'immovable object' would drain such a stupid amount of energy that it's more efficient to spend it in that flashy way, and Weiss doesn't have the spontaneous thrust nor shield battery to deal with it. Asche takes over and transitions into what amounts to a mech showdown at this point, and it's clear to at least six plus one people why.

    Though he opens up with another barrage of missiles, firing side boosters in a wild zigzag pattern to pour them on from multiple angles and rapidly dodge return fire, they're an opener to get the Saint of Glass to dodge into line with the heavy, black, single piece 'rifle' plugged into his arm, gathering droplets of amber light down its length without a sight, trigger, bolt, or barrel. Once he has a decent shot, the air atomizes around the firing aperture, creating a searing white 'muzzle flash' and a punchy, magnetic-incendiary sound. A fairly heavily charged RAISER bolt is fired at center mass; an expensive option as a specific counter to another use of the IMMOVABLE aspect of the glass exosuit.
Yang Xiao Long     The storm passes, and the brawler is caught in it. That urge to feel the rush only spurs her faster, carrying all that weight of momentum into her strike. Yang goes screaming past after literally ripping a leg off of the mech. Then she gets peppered by those energy blasts and her jacket bursts into shreds, welts and blood springing from the holes in the back of her undershirt. She screams anew, in pain as she slumps over the controls of her bike, that scream of pain turns into an absolutely blood curdling roar of fury.

    Yang slams on the 'brakes', turns the bike sideways along the Line track, then leaps from the bike to let momentum carry her into the samurai's armour, her fist ratcheting back as her face twists into a furious caricature of herself, a beast of rage and destructive purpose.

    Her Aura flares brilliantly, 'wings' of energy extending out from her back in an intimidating display, as she pours every last drop of energy into a single haymaker of a punch.

    As she passes from her headlong strike, Bumblebee slides neatly into position to catch her.
Starbound Flotilla     Lashing one's tail around a moving object at supersonic speed would be a bad idea, but the massive man is also dashing all around the battlefield at high speeds on his own, which means that Leyanne can lash a tail around a stray piece of the Linerunner's machinery, causing the man to whiplash during one of his dashes straight into the ground and right under one of the treads, and the noise that the glass makes as treads move over it at supersonic speed is... Unnerving and uncanny. OOF. This means his sword hand is free now, and after he assaults Zwei, he's back around for Leyanne. She's likely to be in the air or along the side of the Linerunner or something like that, which is why the light overhead work, as he zips around, trying to slam Leyanne down into the gap between the train and the Linerunner, is so annoying and so potentially lethal... but only if it can be sustained, which is seeming increasingly unlikely. "Third Sea Hylotl Style: Unbreachable Surface!"
Starbound Flotilla     Kotone keeps peppering the man, which is likely to keep him from slapping Leyanne square into the dirt, or from sustaining those kunai tosses, for long. It leaves him sick and tired of her peppering him with those bullets! After enough of that rapid shot, he ditches his current attack and dips low, intent on swiping her off the train with a dedicated low slice. "Fourth Sea Hylotl Style: Cast Unto Waves!"
Corona Arclite "Didn't Ah just tell ya to shut it?" Is Corona flippant remark to the constant zealous spheal.

The Treasure blasts by, once again sending surges of heat through the vicinity. But coming from a world of desert extremes with gear made to match, it's tolerable. Especially when she's got something more to focus on like fighting.

And a cluster of kunai being thrown around her at her feet, which promptly explode. The gunslinger vixen disappears into the resulting cloud of smoke that, simply due to dramatic effects, doesn't immeadiately blast away by insane speeds because they're all at the same relative speed atop the train. Or something like that. The Line is simply just that much giving a finger to casual metaphysics.

You would almost thing there was no way to survive that... But then a boot steps out of the lingering smoke, with the rest of Corona following, chopped and sliced duster trailing behind her in the whisps, the lingering glow of the Treasure's passing reflecting off her goggles. Somehow, by standing dead center in the exploding projectiles and steeling her will, she avoided the actual blasts. Just a bit winded from the experience.

"But, if ye wanna speech."

As she's stepped out fo the smoke Corona's already got Forgesweeper in hand, doing the Action Hero One-Handed Cock with it's recreation of a lever action.

"Allow me to retort."

'Retort' being leveling the weapon at Mr. Glassypants and opening fire with a surge of electrified superheated power. The pulsarium powered discharge and its intense energy output might not be immeadiately distructive, but the non-standard superheated energy might be enough to melt some layers off that armor.
Starbound Flotilla     Grappling hook! Dexter gets that around the damaged leg that Yang made, which means that no matter how much rocketry he tries, he can't burn the carbon nanotube wires. And he's event less capable of dealing with it when Dexter goes One Armed Warmonger on his armor, reeling in hard and tearing the thing up. It's tough, it's built to last, it's designed to faceplant into the dirt at relativistic speeds and leave the pilot alive, and yet the Venture Suit manages to rip chunks out of the side of his armor, tearing out a fuel line, ripping out a major power conduit, and even punching through to the vulnerable flesh within. "GHHH--!" The Saint of Glass cries out. "It is a /battlefield/! Have /dignity/!" But criticizing Dexter's /politeness/ is hard to do while Dexter is so busy rapidly disassembling him. "I will not be moved by one so /unworthy/ of the light of the Line!" He cries out, trying to flare that light back up... But he's running out. The power conduit is leaking huge amounts of that light, and the glass is running dry on its storage capacity, so the searing heat can't burn even as much as that storm.
Leyanne Leyanne grunts in pain as she's slammed into the ground, although Ko's attack prevents it from pummeling her into the ground /super/ hard. She launches one of her grappling hooks to haul her back aboard the Linerunner. It's clear she's pretty badly hurt, unslinging her gau-12 again. She leans quite heavily on the linerunner's railings, looking like she's trying to recover her breath. But at the same time, leaning on her tail, she manages to bring her gun to bear on the rapidly-moving Glass Saint, chasing him around the sky with her 25mm cannon.
Starbound Flotilla     Shockwaves! The man is running out of rocketry to dish out, and he's stuck with hovering. But with shockwave after shockwave racing back towards him, and bursts of glass from below tearing down glass on him, the side that isn't getting deconstructed by Dexter is getting badly ablated by Riva, and the fact that she's so eagerly pressing forward in spite of the damage means he can't drive her off very effectively. But she's the tank of this group, and that means she's the one to suffer pain. He brings out another big, beefy swing, surging towards her and bringing down an overhead strike meant to take her and her bike out both at once, and an enraged roar that still doesn't fail to provide a little bit of fanciness. "Sixth Sea Hylotl Style: Seafloor Quake!"
Starbound Flotilla     Thankfully by now, the deck isn't the main site of battle, which means Staren is popping railgun blasts into the samurai from above. He suffers them, putting up an arm -- less damaged by the recent assaults on his legs -- up to protect crucial machine parts that are getting increasingly exposed. His UNSTOPPABLE mode activated for only a second, long enough to swipe a heavy kunai up at him, an explosive one that arcs to land in or near his machine from above and detonate with a little anti-materiel payload!
Dexter Arkwright Dexter might have been able to calm down a little, but being called /unworthy/ burns a fire inside of him as he snarls back. "SHUT UP! Who are you to call me unworthy?! I'm worthy of plenty of things! Dexter Arkwright, one of the most important men you'll ever meet, and I'm going to MAKE YOU REGRET EXISTING!" Dexter's self-esteem has definitely been hit to the point that he's going to do something stupid, so even as that heat burns against his suit and starts to get past its defenses, searing into his skin...he focuses instead on getting his arm as gripped around the Saint's arm as possible. The suit's actuators all are pushed to their extremes as Dexter moves to launch the thrusters to replace his lack of skill, and try and snap that arm with a mix of a thruster jump and raw force.

Even if the others are trying to kill the Saint of Glass, in the end, Dexter just wants to make things even and break his arm. This is probably going to be the last attack Dexter can make, though - he's running off adrenaline, seriously feeling the pain from those attacks and that broken arm.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone's amro is taking some serious damage here and a paortion it slices off, it does it's job from keeping the blow from getting too deep though and Kotone looks at the Samurai. She's on her back now too, it takes her a moment ot get back on her feet. She look at the Samuraio and nwaits for Corona ot make her move. Then she moves in on the Samurai as fast as she can go, she does not use her gun, no she slips out of a pouch a grenade and tries to slap it on the guy's back, with some of all things duct tape, the plasma grenade if it does stick will quickly tick down and explode.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"
Staren     The kunai explodes above him. The Star Hawk shakes, and shards of metal rattle free around the already damaged areas.

    The capacitors are finally charged.

    The Star Hawk drops back to the deck. As it lands, there's the screech of stressed metal and a few more loose parts drop off. "Let's see just how 'Unstoppable' you really are." Staren switches the laser cannon to the mecha's other hand and starts firing. Single pulses instead of bursts. The right arm fires some railgun slugs up at him, but this isn't the real attack, no. He's just trying to get the Saint to use Unstoppable... which means staying in place.

    The right shoulder pack unfolds and extends into a massive magitech sniper rifle, more than 40 feet long, the right arm grabbing a pistol grip to stabilize it. If he can get the Saint to hold still for a moment, Staren takes aim and fires. With magically-enhanced accuracy, the shell crosses the intervening distance so fast that the air erupts in flame as it passes, and on impact -- if it impacts -- the fire and water aspects inside mix violently and erupt in a sort of magical steam explosion!

    Man, if this doesn't overload the Unstoppable effect, Staren's going to look really silly.
Starbound Flotilla     The Saint of Glass engages Asche directly, seeing a mirror of its own types of height and weight class in a sense, and the "fear" it seemed to show seems pleasing. Sadly, that doesn't really give the Saint much to work with on winning this fight. He darts and dashes and slings kunai as fast as he can, trying to close the distance, and seemingly unable to, until he suffers the dead-on shot... No. Not quite. Zwei's neural reading systems will be able to notice that something like the radiation effect, patterns like the boar's neural structure, flare up in the brain of the Saint very abruptly, and his motion is presciently deft and swift, working at reaction times that are unspeakably, impossibly fast for human neural matter, an expression of UNSTOPPABLE that goes deep into the brain.

    The helmet is ripped off in the effort to dodge, the armor is seared, but it fails to land just precisely in the middle, and instead boils the flesh of the pilot's shoulder. What he does next is something even he barely seems to understand: The Hylotl within, an aged veteran with tough, leathery looking amphibian skin, opens his mouth and shouts a kiai that ejects a bolt of that strange light that zips at Asche fast, smaller and less weighty, but still containing that "unstoppable" aspect. That weird energy's penetration in its effects isn't just skin deep!
Starbound Flotilla     Yang's strike comes down like it's going to strike hard, and shit, it does! It carries tremendous force, such that it has a hell of a heavy rushing shockwave, but the samurai, digging deeper into his own personal stores of this strange Line energy, manages to tilt just slightly out of the way. This leaves one side of his face bruised heavily, and chunks of the machinery ripped out where Yang didn't even touch it, where only the wake of her attack touched. The Saint's heavy breathing and urgent panting is audible even over the intense wind, desperately gasping as he takes another hefty swing with his blade as best he can, roaring as he tries to tear up the terrain below to carve a gorge that can damage Yang as she passes over it, a burst of glass that should impact her while she has no way to dodge! "Fifth... Fifth Sea Hylotl Style: Geyser of Death!"
Zwei     The incoming kunai are predictable this time. Even at these insane speeds, the two 'mecha' are moving at a near-matched frame that makes the aerial dogfight appear to be almost at a hovering standstill, and so the optical line in Asche's 'helmet' easily tracks the hyperglass blades by the Saint's arm motions, predicting their arcs, and not so much weaving out of the way as flashily zipping back and forth with huge thruster plumes that make his bulk look like nothing. He has to check for miscalculation when his intended coup de grace only wounds the pilot inside, rather than obliterating him, but when the nanosecond software diagnostic checks out, Zwei can only assume that the weirdness that is the Line goes much deeper than this.

    It comes to this conclusion while it already has Weiss standing around holding up a brain in a jar to the incredible heat and radiation that comes off the treasure on its round trip like some sort of newly christened king baby, of course. Those two things are different.

    It's that 'ready for anything' posture Zwei takes towards Multiversal weirdness like this that gives Asche the necessary edge, having no way to expect some kind of laser shout, but having focused fully on defensive signaling. The instant he picks up the energy spike, Asche fires thrusters on alternating sides of his massive body to spin out of the way in a downward angled vortex of fire, slamming into the Linerunner's upper chassis hard enough to rock it on its tracks, and grinding to a halt in two rotations by his talons.

<<Running reaaaaal low on battery here.>>
||I am finishing it.||

    Asche's arm snaps upwards from the insane g-force maneuver and fires in the blink of an eye, splitting the air with the coruscating shriek of another white-gold RAISER bolt, aimed for the exosuit's midsection rather than the pilot, set to bisect its top from its bottom.
Yang Xiao Long     SHUNK. Blood and golden Aura energy spray from Yang's back as that blade slashes through her. The energy barrier of her Aura stops some of it, turning the blade away from a fatal blow, but as she lands on her bike, she's suffering.

    Yang's face is contorted in pain, fury and a desire to destroy the source of the first thing. Red eyes glower, burning hot coals surrounded by pulsing golden light. Her hair is a billowing mass, like it's alive, whipping about in the wind of the Line, while also flaring out in its own unfelt storm. She opens her mouth, but instead of words, a simple, wordless roar of fury emerges. She guns the engine of her bike, pushing it past the redlines to catch back up with the fray. She purges the chambers of her weapon, the spent cartridges vaporizing as they instantly slow down on impact, coming apart and merging with the Line. Reloading by shoving her arms into two ports on her bike, she aims behind, firing to boost speed like last time, then hops onto the saddle and leaps, firing herself like a human projectile. "RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!" as she aims an axehandle to the samurai's face.
Starbound Flotilla     Corona's hit blasts the samurai hard, and the pulsarium digs in deep. The non-conductive glass has been worn away badly, meaning that a shot that deep digs in hard, and will be surging damage into his body for a long while yet, overheating systems and gently boiling flesh within, provoking a groan of rage. "I've no interest in actions without convictions. Quips and apathy are for schoolchildren. Blind violence is for drones. Warriors fight with conviction." His good -- well, better -- arm is leveled at her, and blasts HARD, creating a dense beam of harsh, UNSTOPPABLE light meant to force her back or force her to at least take cover.
Starbound Flotilla     Leyanne's strikes pepper the man from above, and he defends as much as he can against it, but his machine is breaking down, and the pilot is suffering; just being near the impact of one of those shots is jarring enough to be lethal for someone not in power armor! Luckily, he can put his arms up, defend a little better, and draw up some focus, before swipping a heavy fan of blades towards Leyanne, trying to force her further back into cover or away from the edge of the Linerunner.
Starbound Flotilla     Trying to break that arm right back so, so intensely, focusing so hard, means the samurai can do little. He's already having to swing that arm around plenty to fling those kunai. It means he can do little to avoid it when he gets that arm gripped, and with so much of the machine torn away, Dexter just has to pull... At just the right angle, and... KR-SNAP. A joint makes a noise a joint should not make, and the man makes a half-screaming grunt of pain through gritted teeth. He can recognize when someone's working more on /spite/ than on sense, and he knows enough to be insulted by it. He flares again, and again, until he just has to crash the pommel of his katana, still held in the main hand, into Dexter repeatedly, trying to knock him off /somehow/!
Riva Banari Riva's work ih harrying the Saint of Glass is paying off to some degree, but no good deed goes unpunished. There's a lot to be said, but most of it is lost in the massive, flashy strike that the Hylotl glass-infused mecha brings to bear. With a massive swing, he drives the blade down, and Riva brings her anchor up to meet it. Were she on the ground to brace, it might have worked.

Except she's not. Isaac Newton is the meanest son of a bitch on The Line. The impact crashes her down right into the ground, spiking her into the glassy, shredded surface whiche does her no favors whatsoever. The bike promptly explodes, which compounds the problem. Surely, that's the end of the annoying bee.

"YOU FLAPJACKING CAR-DRIVING GOAT-PETTING SON OF A BAKE SALE!" Riva yells, a golden light sweeping out on a tether as the anchor lashes to the enemy, ripping her bloodied body off the ground as she is propelled forward once more to reach parity... Then turns, rebounding off of the hypertrain, using the impetus to run along the side and leap off of it to come around wide, sweeping in around in a graceful arc as she comes in to collide right into the machine's back.

"You know, that really hurt me, deep inside." She says as she clambers around the machine, working her way higher and using her anchor as a pick. "I thought we shared something for a minute. Something special." Every so often, she stops for a moment, slapping a little device on the mecha that chirps. She works her way up to the head, climbing up onto one shoulder in the chaos. "But in the end, I think this just isn't going to work out. It's not you, it's me. Really."

Then she pulls out the radio detonator from her jacket and hits the plunger.
Corona Arclite Corona keeps her weapon gripped in one hand, and fires the grappler from her other glove onto the deck at the same time the samurai unleashes his energy wave at her. At the impact she grimaces, sparks shooting from under her soles as magnetic heels screech against the metal surface, but between those and the quick thinking to anchor herself she's not flung off the fast moving vehicle like he probably intended.

Behind the goggles her eyes scowl in a steely gaze towards him. Ears flick forward slightly.

"Pff." The grappler whizzes as it's released and recoils back into her glove. She ponders what to do next... but then sees Yang's bike flaring by, the golden slugger redlining as hard as the vehicle is. Zwei and the others also moving in.

Instead Corona grabs the brim of her hat to hold it down as she turns away from the samurai, doing the whole Lone Gunslinger bit and rubbing it in the most in that she just -walks away- from him and his constant rambling.

"Convinction is more than just fightin' and honor..." The vixen pauses, not turning back to him but canting her head just enough to give a gleam in her eye as she pulls her goggles of.

"But y'all so blinded by your own ya never truely saw what yer up against..."
Leyanne Leyanne takes a few hits from the scattering of fan blades. She is indeed driven back somewhat into cover. It's at this point that the cumulative damage that's been done to her causes something in her cybernetic arm to break. As she staggers back, there's a loud CLUNK, and the cybernetic separates at the elbow, causing the Avenger's barrel cluster to hit the deck with a thud

In her anger, the mouse yanks it off her gun and throws it at the Glass Saint. Whether he's still standing at this point or not.
Starbound Flotilla     Staren goes for the idea of firing at the staying-in-place mode, which is technically IMMOVABLE; it's what he just activated while trying to take out Dexter. But when that happens... Something odd occurs. When something so deeply steeped in inherent UNSTOPPABILITY, and impacts the IMMOVABLE mode, Staren finds something highly, intensely unusual happens.

    This segment of ground -- something for about two hundred feet around the general radius of the Linerunner -- suddenly finds itself transported westward at a substantial speed, one well exceeding multiples of the speed of light, for a fraction of a second -- and then the effect stops, the sudden speedboost is gone, they're back at thousands of miles per hour as if it had never been there, leaving the glass of the ground they were previously riding on shattering around them, and jostling all the vehicles as they regain their footing and acceleration, losing a lot of the gained ground they had. The Saint appears to have... Not mostly gotten hurt by that? Somehow? Something happened with the interaction with their weird energies, but it's not clear what. But Staren's recording and sensor systems -- and everyone else's too -- now have a nice packet of data for later examination.

    What the fuck was THAT that just happened?!
Starbound Flotilla     Something about what just happened seems to have caused the man to experience something akin to a religious event. It's not 100% clear what he just experienced, but it seems to have made him a little more willing to stay around for a little while longer, and that's made them a little more energized. Whatever Staren just did, it's a fundamental interaction with THE LINE and its unusual properties.
Dexter Arkwright The satisfying crack of breaking the samurai's arm makes Dexter glad that his maneuver worked, but he's exhausted and overclocked. The light-infused pommel strikes manage to knock Dexter off, mixed with the sudden speed boost that suddenly clicks over everywhere, and Dexter is sent flying backwards in pain. He rolls to the side of the Linerunner, injured, but he's not out of the fight...he's too stubborn to be taken out. He's not going to be able to do anything impressive, though.

Instead, Dexter just raises his arm up, and tries to fire off a red-hot wrist-laser at the Saint. It's nothing special, but hopefully it'll be able to assist in the final blows at the least. But Dexter doesn't really have the energy to move anymore, and will be eating that damage for sure.
Starbound Flotilla     Kotone's deft maneuvering requires a hell of a lot of agility and stealth, but the armor-pilot is hardly one who's going to spot her right now; instead, he only notices the plasma grenade when its nuclear signature suddenly starts standing out! He only has a fraction of a second between the time when its atomic processes start and when hot plasma fire will be making cooked fish for dinner, but he makes the most of it, flaring the last of his power as best he can to desperately force the thing's adhesive to detach and slip away, giving him those precious inches of distance that make it possible to survive the thing.
Starbound Flotilla     Zwei's hefty blast is... HELD BACK, suddenly, by a strange parrying maneuver that leaves the bolt held in mid-air somehow, conducted along the still-intact glass of the katana. His left arm is utterly ruined, but his right arm is straining to keep the bolt back. The impact doesn't cut him in half, but as it bleeds through and eventually washes over his body, it does rip much of the leg section off, much of what Yang already took out. He doesn't have enough energy to remain flying long, and he needs to fly to stay in this fight.

    His suit may be running out of energy, but he's not. "I have seen so much! I have known so much of what lies in the Line! I will not be felled! Not while the Priestess of the Holy Combustion has blessed me! Not while the Treasure has filled me with light! Not while the Line itself sustains me! Grant me motion! Grant me motion eternal! HAAAAAAAAH!" He fires another blast at Zwei, trying to drive him off, less and less capable of mustering it. And then...
Starbound Flotilla     The Saint is battered, smashed by incoming shots. Then comes the axehandle. The man can see his life flashing before his eyes. The third eye of the Hylotl blinks once, and focuses on Yang in motion. There's a heavy CLONG as the axehandle... Stops just millimeters short of the man's skull. The katana, held in one hand, has just /barely/ interposed itself in time; the arm's motors are overloading and exploding to keep up, almost ruining the last arm. He whispers, quietly, with an impressed tone:

    "You are unstoppable in the way we of the Line are. How?"

    Then he seems to quash his curiosity, and opens his mouth to release a final, shouting blast, delivered point-blank, one that's meant to send Yang directly into the wall of the Linerunner.
Zwei <<Oh for- just die already!>>
||It is best not. I have discovered much productive data from studying these anomalous properties ostensibly granted to him by closer exposure to the core of the Line.||
<<God I /hate/ these stupid dogpiles! The combat zone becomes a total mess I can't control for and the speechifying drives me nuts! Isn't the entire point to exponentially multiply firepower on a single target and bring them down /faster/?>>
||There is no replacement for strategy, I suppose.||

    Despite the strange Hyotl knight's dramatics, Zwei can sense his elevated pulse and laboured breathing, as well as the internal stresses on his body's structure and- well it doesn't take a genius to see the state of his suit. With the bizarre capabilities he's shown so far though, it actually seems more and more suboptimal to take the obvious course the Licht was set on earlier.

    Instead of dodging the incoming kiai and returning one last fatal RAISER blast, Asche buckles down, lowers his profile against the deck, and shields most of his legs with his torso, then most of his torso and head with his upheld forearms, using the extreme range of motion of his joints to effectively boxer guard 80% of his body. The superpowered kiai slams into him and sends him screeching back across the deck, but his talons hold, and the field that shimmers oddly with the non-newtonian force of the impact remains intact.

    From that standstill, Asche fires off his afterburners, races forwards across the battlezone that is the Linerunner, and crashes into the battered glassmech at full force. Discarding his weapon into redspace, his giant hand sweeps out, rips through the mecha's superstructure, and swings to scoop the Hyotl pilot out in one violent motion, rather than tearing or crushing him in a lethal manner. Zwei has a use for him.
Starbound Flotilla     That's the second person who's planted bombs on the back of this suit of armor. It's exposing massive chunks of crucial energy conduits, which are badly overloaded or disconnected. Good places for Riva to plant things while the damnable samurai is barely staying "afloat" in the glassy sea. Once he's done with Yang, he's already well riddled with these explosives, and grabs urgently at Riva when he realizes where she was, not realizing she's gotten up onto his shoulder. He can manage only a hefty swing at her when the time comes, before the remains of the torso of the unit are ripped apart, and the last of the arm disabled. What does he even HAVE now that the torso and all limbs are gone?!
Starbound Flotilla     The arm smacks the Glass Saint's big shoulder armor and he's briefly confused about what that noise was. He needs a hand, but not that.
Starbound Flotilla     Dexter's laser-fire is something he can barely dodge away from now. He's down to such little gear that it's hard to imagine what he's even using to maneuver. A handful of thrusters on a personal movement pod that's barely flying? It's certainly leaving him distracted...
Starbound Flotilla     During all that, the man continues efforts to blast out his only weapon he has remaining, that strange Unstoppability attack, desperately trying to fire back at Dexter, who he sees as a /personally offensive/ human being for his shenanigans. It's... Understandably draining to his endurance reserves! Which means...
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is forced back to keep away from the blast radius of her own grenade she leaps away rolling and clining to the deck she'll look back at how the fight is going for her allies and things are just getting nuts as the rest of the crew is unloading without much holding back. Herself? She's about do another assault but then comes the enemy finally falls but it seems help may be needed.
Starbound Flotilla     The man's left exhausted enough by the efforts that an attempt by Zwei to crash into him and then yank his entire body out of the mini-mech leaves the whole thing utterly demolished and leaves the man -- burned, bruised, and beaten -- easily yanked out of what really shouldn't even be remotely functioning anymore. Whatever use Zwei has for this Line-mutated weirdo and his strange energies, they may be able to have, if nobody else wants to finish off the broken body. He's kind of slapping at Asche's big fist with his one good arm; he just keeps going right to the end, truly embodying unstoppable at least on a mental level.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang snarls back at the pilot. She speaks two words, the only coherant thing she's spoken since kneecapping the mech. "I. BURN!" her hands move to grip the blade of that katana, feet planting on the suit's shoulders to try and grapple it out of the way.

    And then she takes that mouth laser straight to the face.

    Aura condenses into an almost physical barrier, burning away as she's pushed backwards. It gives out, and she goes flying, slamming hard into the bulkhead with a sickening *CRACK*. She falls out of the imprint, and lands in an unnatural position, motionless.
Dexter Arkwright Dexter is a sitting target for the Saint of Light, and the powerful attack launches into him. It impacts his entire body, tearing a hole through the Venture Suit that then proceeds to smash into his actual body and draw blood, and sending the adventurer flying back, almost off the ledge, his one good arm barely catching on and hanging there for him to be dragged up by someone. The suit will repair itself slowly over time, Dexter...

Dexter will need a doctor.
Leyanne Leyanne disconnects her cannon and lets it drop, then jogs over to Yang. The first thing she does is check for spinal injuries, and, if she finds none, she moves Yang into a more breathing-friendly position and begins first aid, stabilizing her and checking for more serious inuries.