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Gideon Kaspar     It makes sense that the scenery would be largely the same, since the location 'VZ-61' is being kept isn't far from the command post raided for the intel. Set out in an idyllic, rolling green countryside, close to the misty alpine mountains with crisp, clean air, and only a sleepy little rural town around, it's also equally weird, if not eerie, that this is supposedly the site of a secret base kept by vicious androids owned by the Sangvis Ferri company, mysteriously silent after their products began cropping up all over their extranational territory and expanding in all directions.

    Sleepy may be the wrong word, however. The township is quaint, rustic, and relatively small, with red shingled roofs and old mortar construction, having both wide cobble roads and narrow, packed dirt paths, but it is also completely deserted; a ghost town. There are no signs of battle present, and no signs of natural disaster either, not to mention that there seem to be no mounted emplacements of perimeter alarms suitable for a militarized outpost.

    Sent by helicopter again, due to a lack of a Warpgate anywhere this far out in the middle of nowhere and completely irrelevant, those taking a ride are briefed by the same radio voice as before: a strict, older sounding women with a no-nonsense tone. The content is nothing special however, going over the basics of this being a 'recon' base, and the absolute imperative objective of rescuing the captured T-Doll who possesses crucial, top secret data.

    Deploying on a calm, empty, and extremely quiet grassy hill just on the fringes of town, the transport won't take them any further, and leaves them to make their way in on foot, again, despite the lack of anti-air weapons. They're told that the 'local commander' assigned to this sector will be operating on the opposite end of town, where it begins sprawling on the edge of a small lake, and to be careful of friendly fire.
Hemlock Hemlock's here for another mission, after his stealth mission went really well last time. The pay was good and that let him keep his primary business afloat, so adventuring, as he considered this, was worth it. He's currently a generic male human, with dark hair, a hat, and a jacket. A knife is tucked into his jacket, and a bag is hanging around his waist.

Hemlock's an infiltrator, which he tells the rest of the group - he's going to be splitting off from them to get in his own way. Hemlock also talks to the group as they're touching down. "If you get a chance for an ambush, aim for the spine. Best way to kill them." It's said super matter-of-factly, before they touch down.

Once they actually touch down, though, Hemlock's goal is to just...wander into town. He's going to try and look like a lost traveler for any watching eyes, avoid being around the others, and try and find the most conspicuous looking building or cluster of noises. To help this, he goes up to buildings as if he's looking for people to talk to, but his actual goal is to investigate doors, trying to get an idea of what buildings are used the most. His footsteps are quiet either way - his main goal in coming off as a traveler is in case they have cameras or similar.
Haguro      Despite the serious and focused expression on Haguro's face as she checks her cannons over, she's feeling much more anxious this time around. This is the actual rescue mission, after all, and having to worry about blowing up the target as well as allies on the other side of the town means she needs to be a smidge more careful this time around.

     Still, the battle experience is invaluable, and sh emight be able to make some good conenctions this time around if things go well enough. "Noted. Explosives may be viable as a secondary option, but too many might make rescuing the target difficult."

     With little in the way of disguises herself, however, Haguro opts for a more direct approach: She heads straight into the town, moving in a direct path towards the opposite end. She's got the armor, and she's got the weapons, so why not let herself be the one to draw fire? Something's bound to pop out, and if nothing else, there's always the possibility of meeting with the local commander.
Gordon Freeman     Here's Gordon again. Once again he's quite quiet, but attentive. He's poking and prodding at the interface of his HEV suit with ever piece of tactical data about the base. And the old, long-abandoned, reused, militarized town, somehow that provokes a little moment of deja vu. What does he remember that from? Nothing, right? Well, this time, it looks like there's nothing like the other warehouses and airfields, there's no better tactical approach than the short route of heading right in.

    But it does have to be that simple. Rather than blindly running in, he calls up the video that they recovered. The best assumption to make is that they'd minimize the time spent on prisoner transfer. Is there any structure around here that looks like it might have shown up in there? Gordon doesn't mention it to the others, but he's about to make a beeline straight for whatever part of the town most resembles the video... Or perhaps scout with Haguro, if there's no clues in the video. He's a sturdy son of a bitch, and he can handle heading there with her, hefting his SMG and ready to lash out with blasts of gunfire the moment anything heads their way.
Tomoe Tomoe was late to the party so to speak, yet after the Dark Lady Quest Chain was finally over so she was more prone to checking the ye old job board as it were and found one promising one. She also had fiddled with her appearance skin going under the guise of Eisen Blumen. A slight mangling of Iron Flower in German, and this mission was to rescue a T-Doll a local type of combat android. Given it was labelled a rescue mission rather than asset recovery? She suspected that this was one that wasn't just some battle drone but a person or nearly so that anyone would feel uncomfortable in calling them a thing.

Her old Shotgun and pistol were long on display in her personal quarters as after the change? She really couldn't use GGO gear anymore but the appearance had some uses, it stood out a might bit less than a towering Salamander. Given she was a fresh face she could just pose as the wandering sort which is just what she intended to do much like Hemlock. After all the Iron Lily was a total unknown no matter what skin she used.
Staren     An employee of the so-far-apparently-upstanding G&K company has been kidnapped! Staren has no reason to believe G&K is shady, let alone that all its employees are, so as far as he's concerned, this is the same as any other kidnapping. That the kidnappee is a combat android just means she might be able to help fight their way out once she's freed and rearmed.

    Staren can SORT of do stealth, enough to slip by untrained, unexpecting rubes, but at the cost of leaving a lot of his toys behind. So he opts for the direct approach today, wishing Hemlock "Good luck!" as the man splits off.

    Staren follows Haguro at a distance, armored up and with his laser rifle at the ready to try and snipe any enemies who go for the first target to present itself.
Riva Banari Riva is not an infiltrator. She's a heavy forward combatant type. In fact, she's chewing on a lollipop and holding a shotgun.

She might fit in with some of the T-Dolls, really. The instructions from the commanding officer get an acknowledgement from the Templar. "Get in, recover the T-Doll, get out. Got it." Riva isn't sure what a T-Doll is yet, but she figures it'll be pretty obvious.

A few minutes later, she deploys onto the hill, the second (third? Fourth? Fifth?) gunman on a grassy knoll. She strolls forward, nodding to Hemlock. "Spine shot? Got it. Thanks for the tip." She says, giving him a thumbs up. Unlike Hemlock, however, she simply advances straight ahead, as if daring something to try to stop her from linking up with local command. "I'll take point." She says to the others, her shotgun shouldered as she moves ahead. "No need to risk yourselves." Haguro seems to have a similar idea though. She doesn't argue, simply walking along
Orchid      Orchid's feelings on this mission were... complex. There had been plans to take part in a prior stage of this mission, largely to see if she could gather dirt on Gideon Kaspar, that were scrubbed for incomplete preparation. On the other hand, reports from trusted sources indicated that the stage of the mission was against the sorts that would torture robots, something Orchid is against. Also, given the objective, it's not what she had been afraid it might have bee, so Orchid feels comfortable joining as herself.

     On landing, Orchid's approach is fairly standard for her; she spent the time approaching researching what information was available on the area, and her spiders are unleashed once she's on the ground. The little robots will act as scouts, small enough to sneak through sensor grids that might catch larger subjects. The reploid herself follows the other members of the party; she's not a main combatant. Or any kind of combatant, if she has any say in the matter.
Gideon Kaspar     Despite Hemlock's best efforts and intentions, wandering around like a lost traveller yields nothing but unsettling lonesomeness. As far as he can tell, /none/ of the buildings are used. Some of the doors are locked, but thick layers of dust inside and grit on the windows indicate they've been abandoned for some time. A general lack of worthwhile possessions left indoors might mean an evacuation, or possibly just looting, but there doesn't seem to be anything to have fled from, or much to have been worth taking. There's nothing dark or suspicious about any of it, in this idyllic little nebulously European town, but that has something of its own menace to it as well.

    The old video isn't tremendously helpful either. Taken entirely from a first person perspective as an eye-cam feed, it doesn't pay much attention to scenic details. It's at least obviously indoors, and somewhere with a dirt road nearby, but the only defining landmark is what actually looks to be wreckage, from perhaps some kind of aircraft, partially buried in greenery, seen through a window. It hadn't been visible from the air due to the general prevalence of tall buildings and thick groves of trees, though with those criteria, it at least narrows the search area down to a town hall, a large church, a library building, and what appears to be a small school, none of which are outwardly militarized.

    Things only seem to go amiss when Orchid's drones start disappearing. The high altitude air and winding streets of hard stone and brick make the few sounds the group can make out confusing, taking on a misty quality that bounces many times from the surrounding surfaces. A short whine here. An electric crack there. The drones don't capture any imagery of what gets them, but go dark instantaneously, at first only one or two picked off, but then more and more at an accelerating rate, as if their locations are being figured out more easily.

    The noises are to all sides of the advancing group, unsettlingly unchallenged in any way even as they walk right down main street and far enough into the town to be seeing watchmakers and grocers buildings rather than houses, joined together by small, empty, interconnected plazas. Orchid can of course pinpoint the exact locations the drones went down, and there are those locations Gordon can easily figure out, as well as the option of simply being really loud and drawing a lot of attention immediately.
Orchid      Well, it's a good thing Orchid came out here with the assumption that she'll lose drones, and only released some. What's less good is how they're taken out; the drones have 360 degree vision, so if they're not seeing what's hitting them, it probably has very good stealth. Still, their losses will give Orchid a general idea of where whatever taking them out is. "We have something of interest here, someone's taking out my drones," Orchid reports to the others. She points in the direction of the heaviest losses, and sends her remaining active drones around that area, in case there is something behind that zone being protected.
Gordon Freeman     Alright, Gordon. If you were an evil torture robot, where would you set up a prison? Think. Think, and of course, never tell anyone your conclusions. Well, a library isn't a good place; there aren't enough small rooms, everything's technically open around the shelves. What about a church? Better, but most of the space is used up on a central area or sometimes areas. A town hall? Similar to a church, but maybe a better possibility. A school? Hmmm... Between a school and a town hall, a town hall has more single-entry secure spaces that are likely to be windowless.

    Alright, analysis done. Town hall. Gordon prods something on his HEV suit, and the synthesized voice says, "Objective set. Navigation waypoints created." He sets off without any word of explanation about what the fuck he's doing, but boy does he sure have a good, confident look about where he's going. There's no fire on him yet, so he can move quick down the street towards the structure, and search for clues and signs of where the T-Doll might have been taken from nearer the structure. Any sign of the wreckage or the trees? That should be the first thing that pops out.
Staren     Staren is thinking about deploying his own drones to aid the search when Orchid's start being shot down. Hmm. Perhaps if they overlay the drones' destruction positions with the places that could possibly be in the video, they'll find something...

    Orchid's sending out more drones towards a specific location. SOMETHING is there, but is it the target? "Haguro, Tomoe, let's go. Either we're rescuing her or we're being a distraction for those who are." He starts running after the drones, remembering to activate his forcefield after a few seconds.
Haguro      Even with so many allies nearby and a few others even crazy enough to draw fire with her, Haguro's quite on edge with how unnerving the whole area is. The noises are getting to her, the relative isolationis getting to her, and she's already getting jittery by the time she hears that drones are getting picked off by an unseen assailant.

     The fact that she doesn't even have the same level of analysis on the intel about the area nor confidence in their movements as her allies do is what pushes Haguro to start aiming. She's not aiming at anything in particular so much as she's aiming at the sky, switching one of her turrets to anti-air flak. Nodding towards Staren, she follows a fair distance behind him until she finds a relatively open area, then starts firing straight into the air. Small explosions dot the sky above them as the flak detonates rapidly.

     It's not particularly dangerous to anyone what with it being detonated early, but it should be a sufficient noisemaking solution.
Hemlock Well, pretending to be a lost traveler got him nothing, so instead of poking around abandoned buildings, Hemlock decides to tail another group and join up with their efforts. After a few moments of deliberation, he decides to follow Gordon, who being alone will mean that the bard's infiltration attempts can still work pretty well. Besides, they're both quiet dudes, so they can probably get a bunch of work done. Even if Hemlock has no idea what Gordon's plan is or why he's going that way.

Whistling a melody to boost his speed and catch up to Gordon, Hemlock only says a 'hello' so Gordon knows he's nearby, and then moves to keep his eyes out for anything interesting, such as attacks, ambushes, interesting things, or demons. The last one because it's always safe to watch out for demons and demonic plots.
Tomoe Tomoe doesn't see anything there is no one here, none of the buildings appear to be used, some of the doors are lost and she peeks in, it seems someone simply locked the door on the way out intending to return, yet never did. With that in mind and the reports of Orchid's drones going missing. She's going to fall back and she bounds away rapidly using the terrain to speed herself u and get back with the group.

"I might as well make some noise its not like I have Eisen's stealth ranks anymore."

She seems ready to help with the diversion as she readies her Naginata Mooncutter anmd she grins.

"Distractions it is."

She startst chanting in badly mangled nordic and golden runes dance about her body, a moment later rays of light are firing up harmlessly into the sky and being /very/ visable.
Gideon Kaspar     As Gordon moves, he can begin to see at least one pattern emerge. One of the cleared plazas contains what appears to be a war memorial, set up in simple fashion made of polished granite, which about sixty or so names etched into it, likely volunteer soldiers from this town. When Hemlock joins up with him and they stray a little further out of the heart of town and further to places where small boulevards and parks have been set up, finding them somewhat overgrown and unkempt, they begin to find wreckage halfway buried in the dirt. By the looks of it though, it's very old, having sat around for at least a decade or more. Chunks of fighter planes and mortar pieces can be found here and there, like scenic reminders for picnic goers and tourists. Whatever the war, it sure wasn't fought with T-Dolls.

    The 'pattern' of destroyed drones isn't very ordered, but doesn't even get close to reaching the other side of town, probably destroyed nebulously 'from close to the lake' in enemy deployment. When Staren approaches one of the locations where a drone was lost, he doesn't even find it, just a black smudge on the stones, glowing red hot and smoking. He has no prior warning before a bright green flash enters the corner of his vision and smashes into his shield, depleting an enormous chunk of the energy bar and blackening the ground around him. The electric crack that follows is highly delayed, indicating it'd come from very long distance, but it'd struck him with accuracy sufficient that if his shield weren't there, it would have taken his head off.

    That seems to be the signal. When Haguro and Tomoe set up in the plaza and start making a ton of noise and a big light show, it doesn't take long for high-pitched, thrumming whines to reach them. High up in the air, the small, angular, agile 'scout' pattern drones appear from seemingly nowhere, broken up into several wedge formations like teams of fighter craft. They quickly surround them, swooping in from multiple angles and strafing with with short ranged energy blasts from their miniature twin cannons. Just as before, they're pretty nasty for being so small; they're fast, agile, and extremely annoying to hit, seemingly flying without any propulsion, and their weapons are the 'incapacitate a normal soldier with a single direct hit' kind.

    More of them uncover Gordon and Hemlock as well, even stranger for the fact that Hemlock had spotted no drone bunkers whatsoever on the way in. Under the tree cover as they are, the scouts zip down to street level, pulling a hard 90 degree turn just before careening into the ground, and swerving wildly down the path at a near-ground hover, blasting them with volumes of fire from a single direction.

    Only a few seconds later, the rattle and crack of gunfire and the muted thump of explosions can be heard on the opposite side of town, echoing wide. Plumes of smoke start to rise from the lakeside closest to the school, indicating conventional weaponry. G&K has made their move, and is beginning a sweeping advance through the township.
Haguro      Better than expected! Haguro wasn't really expecting her and Tomoe's strategy of SHOOT THE SKY to really draw anything out, but when it does, it's enemies that Haguro's already prepared to fight against! They're not quite the shape she's used to seeing from a flier, however, and their movements aren't quite as predictable as the planes she's gotten used to shooting at.

     That ends up giving her a fair amount of trouble. Her armor gets scorched in spots and her uniform gets holes burnt into it, and there's small pops of blood or oil or.. Whatever it is she's got as the scouts' shots hit less covered areas on the cruiser. She's still got a fair amount of armor to weather some of the worst hits, however, avoiding any direct shots to her head and neck with careful maneuvering of her arms to keep them covered.

     "These scouts are.. Much more maneuverable than the planes from my time!" Haguro sounds simultaneously impressed and annoyed by that realization, running and gunning while trying to get to some cover behind some of the larger buildings. She leads her shots where larger concentrations of the scouts are firing while firing a massive amount of explosives and shrapnel upwards, opting cover a larger area rather than taking precise shots at specific targets. She's not quite in the right state of mind to take careful shots, especially not with a firefight starting so quickly!
Orchid      Getting the pattern becomes a LOT easier once the nature of what is taking out the drones becomes clear. Drones taken out from far away, only when there is line of sight between buildings, and a few more clues... If the sniper or snipers aren't moving around, Orchid will be able to quickly figure out where they are shooting from, and upload that data as an overlay onto the HUDs of her allies. The Reploid herself? Well, she doesn't need to be exposed to gather and relay this information, so she's putting up her own shields, and ducking into the nearest doorway. Also, with her allies providing more immediate targets, her drones may have better luck than before in getting towards the lake.
Hemlock As the drones come out, Hemlock was expecting an attack or something horrible to happen, so as the volumes of fire come forth, he makes a roll to dodge the brunt of it, though he gets burned decently in the process, searing through his jacket and wounding his side, causing him to make noises of pain. Drawing his knife, Hemlock considers how he'll respond, and decides to let Gordon take out the brunt of them. Moving to crouch for cover, Hemlock begins to whistle a tune, boosting himself and Gordon with general combat boosts for offense, defense, and mobility. Instead of fighting himself, he focuses his magic on Gordon to try and turn him into a walking murder machine (even though he kinda already is).

Though if any of the scouts come directly into Hemlock's range, he /will/ swipe at them with the knife and try and take them out, but he's not directly getting in their range or looking for a fight, just weaving in and out of fireblasts.
Staren     Good thing Staren had his shield up already! There would have been no warning, no chance to deploy it in response. Some of the emitters overload and smoke as the outer layers of the shield shatter into quickly-fading amber sparkles. Staren, for his part, takes a couple of quick steps perpendicular to the attack and, sensors guessing at a location from angle and either how far it is to a building or the difference between the energy's apparent speed and the speed of sound going by the report, fires a plasma minimissile up in the air to arc down on them.

    Then he runs for cover, because he's not sure how rapidly they can fire, whether there's more than one, and whether he even hit the one that attacked him.

    Even ducking around a corner, though, he can see the air is now full of... drones? Of some sort, which are annoyingly agile. He fights fire with fire, drawing the missile launcher that looks like a heavy assault rifle with a very large bore and firing up at the group of drones. First HEAT minimissiles, and if they're agile enough to dodge THAT he tries to catch them in plasma missile airbursts.

    The field has to briefly drop every time he fires. Are the drones smart enough to exploit that? Either way, he sure hopes that they don't just shoot down the missiles in flight. THAT would be a problem -- Are they going to need to leave and come back with superior firepower?

    Just as he thinks that, he hears the G&K forces moving in. Dammit, they're committed now...

    Just in case he DOES have to hide and wait for reinforcements, he multiverse-radios for his ship to FTL to orbit over their location. That'll take minutes, but... all the more reason to start setting that in motion now.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon makes sure to stop and read over the memorial. Nothing academic, just a sort of respectful pause. Gordon can deal well with a linear battle like this. Deploying his helmet fast, he suffers the bulk of the fire, surging forward straight through the streets. They're not gonna use that height advantage, but thank goodness. Gordon unloads with the SMG on the scout drones, dumping mags straight at them and refusing to slow as he closes the gap.

    Gordon thinks G&K will probably draw similar conclusions, even if they have other ways of coming to them. That means Gordon needs to make it to the target site at least as the G&K T-Dolls do, to make sure they don't get flanked. That means he has terribly little hesitation about using his bigger arms. The SMG has a built-in grenade launcher, one he takes great advantage of as his attackers swoop low to the ground.

    "Great Scott! Are you seeing those maneuvers? Why, thrusters like that, who knows what kind of strange technologies are responsible!" Dr. Kleiner is monitoring things, of course, from far away in the Lambda Complex, leaning over an old CRT monitor. "Gordon--! Gordon, please, could you try to procure a sample?" Gordon himself seems to have taken a different approach; that kind of maneuvering belies a substantial focus on stability. By blasting the drones with splash-damaging impact grenades, he can hopefully throw their aim off hard with MAGICALLY ENHANCED explosions! After all, those weapons are likely fixed, and those thrusters are likely not quite so impossibly stabilizing.

    Whether he can take them all out, he has to focus on two things: First, keeping Hemlock out of direct fire where possible, and second, charting his path to the Town Hall. Gotta carve a path there as quick as possible, make this a running battle if he has to!
Tomoe Tomoe doesn't see anything there is no one here, none of the buildings appear to be used, some of the doors are lost and she peeks in, it seems someone simply locked the door on the way out intending to return, yet never did. With that in mind and the reports of Orchid's drones going missing. She's going to fall back and she bounds away rapidly using the terrain to speed herself u and get back with the group.

"I might as well make some noise its not like I have Eisen's stealth ranks anymore."

She seems ready to help with the diversion as she readies her Naginata Mooncutter
Riva Banari Things start happening and the group immediately starts breaking apart. Riva sighs and switches her lollipop to the opposite side, gnawing lightly on the stick. "Can't even keep to a decent formation." She mutters. "Weren't we supposed to meet with the commander first?"

The arrival of the enemy makes it a moot point. Riva charges forward into the fray, bringing up the rear as she links back up with Gordon and Hemlock, hurling herself into the battle with shotgun blazing. As particle beams fire towards her, things shift slightly, energy blasts subtly being diverted off target, striking less vital areas, grazing flesh, or striking areas that seem to be far, far more durable than they should be in a layered set of magical defenses that together act to make Riva much, much more durable than she looks.

A hand slams in a fresh set of shells into her shotgun as she brings it around, yelling as she sights in on them, blasting repeatedly as she stomps forward, defiant. "HEY! COME GET SOME!" She yells, trying to attract attention on /her/ and not the others.
Gideon Kaspar     Figuring out the trajectory between Orchid and Staren, they quickly pinpoint the source of the shot to the church at the center of town, easily half a mile away, most likely the bell tower up top. The setup would almost be a world war classic, were it not for being a killer robot with a particle weapon. When Staren fires his missile, it gets most of the way there, before a second shot from an oblique angle takes it out through the side, spearing it in mid-air and actually skewering the thrusters without detonating the warhead, indicating the presence of a second sniper. The rate of fire certainly doesn't seem to be enough to do much about his subsequent missile barrage at the scout swarm, but after a few cycles of letting down his shield, a second shot connects with him mere miliseconds after re-raising it, deleting another piece off his bar. They're trying to figure out the timing, and their fields of fire cover completely different angles.

    The scouts aren't terribly durable though, all things considered. Due to their small size, they /can't/ be incorporating much armour or structural support. Their thermal signature is surprisingly dim, making missile locks difficult, and their seemingly omnidirectional agility lets them dodge up, down, left, right, forward, and backward, but the bigger explosions from the plasma missiles do a decent job of catching them out. The sheer volume of Haguro's AA fire contributes greatly, simply filling the air with enough flak and bullets to make dodging one stream an exercise in wandering into another. Quickly enough, the wrecked, lightweight husks of downed units crash to earth and shatter to pieces.

    On Gordon and Hemlock's end, the scouts are restricted by the park lane they charge down. They do an impressive job of zipping back and forth, weaving erratically on the approach while blasting away. Tightly controlled, fully automatic fire does a decent job of chasing them, taking down a couple of units where the rapid gunfire catches up to one and stitches across its front, sending them skidding across the dirt path in clouds of dust after a few direct hits. The grenade launcher has more success due to there just being nowhere to really /go/. The explosions eat up most of the width of the path, and send the ultra-lightweight scouts tumbling this way and that, crashing into buildings and trees and sending shots veering wildly into the surroundings. When Riva joins in, the scout attack group is done for. Sprays of buckshot catch them out at a flanking angle, wrecking them while they can't control their flight from the blast waves of the grenade launcher. The street is cleared quickly, without any immediate threat to Hemlock this time. They seem to focus on the front line first.
Gideon Kaspar     Just when Haguro is nearly done, the sniper from the church tower fires a barely visible, translucent green blast straight into her, hitting many many times harder than the scout weapons. The flying swarms are less the threat than someone's head being blown off at this point, and it's lucky that there are so many elites with superhuman physiology or ridiculous tech defenses. They'd be dead several times over if they were less well-defended.

    An especially loud explosion rocks the plaza for a split second, and then the radio crackles on from a third party source. A familiar male voice starts on the other end, sounding like an airline steward patiently explaining where the oxygen masks are. "As a heads up, you're under fire from a pair of Jaeger units. They're last generation models, but I'd want at least 150 centimetres of concrete between you and them. I have my own counter sniper setting up position right now. Your cover should arriving right about . . . now." No sooner has he said it than a small, metallic object suddenly clatters into the plaza and dispenses a massive cloud of thick smoke, littered with some slightly reflective polymer dust that scrambles infrared vision.

    "My girls have confirmed the school is clear. Krysanthe and Aer are scouting out the library, but there's been nothing unusual yet. I have confirmed the presence of multiple Ripper units as line infantry though, clustered around defensible main infrastructure, so watch your surroundings. The scout units are a distraction. You have thirty seconds to get to a new position. Thirty five until I can call in the shot. Don't get killed; it'll look bad on my report!"
Orchid      "Darn, and here I had plans to die out here," Orchid deadpans back on the same channel. She ducks back out of the building, and relying on the maps she's been making and updating, goes through the smoke. "Between what you know and what we do, my bet is that the target is at the town hall, so that's where I'm headed. Thanks for the cover." No, she's not dealing with the Scouts herself, she's got different talents. The good news is that she can move pretty well blind, listening for any moving obstacles in her way.
Haguro      Haguro's on a roll today! Her semi-panicked shooting seems to be working quite well all things considered, and having the air threat just about neutralized means the rest of the rescue should proceed swimmingly.

     "Air units neutralized. Let's regroup at..." Haguro trails off as she raises her head momentarily to look around, turning at just the right time to get hit square in the chest by the blast. It knocks her right off her feet and flat on her back, and it's only thanks to her unnatural toughness that she doesn't have a fist-sized hole where her neck used to be.

     Instead, she's left lying there staring at the sky wide-eyed and with her mouth agape, letting out the sort of high-pitched throat gurgle that's the indicator of someone that's in too much pain and shock to scream properly. Haguro's certianly not in any position to fire back right now, so the best she can manage is to vaguely gesture in the direction of the shot before rolling around awkwardly to try and get behind some cover before she can get shot again.
Tomoe Tomoe is springing into action shortly after Haguro opens up on the drones she's moving fast but Haurgo cuts the majority of them down before she can engage she'll make a dive for one of the remaining ones and catches sight of the sniper fire.

"HAGURO!"

She is too late to intercept the shot, but she's not too late to track where it is and she flies right at it in a wild pattern of aerial evasive manoeuvres as she trying to reach the sight of the shots, if she does she's going to to make to engage the sniper up close with her spear id she's able to. Or she may just end up full of holes for her trouble it can be hard for even her to tell.

She's not a happy camper and it shows on her face as she closes in on the apparent sniper, just what it is? Or who it is? She has no idea, and she may be about to painfully find out.
Gordon Freeman     The HEV-OS buzzes and synths, "Moderate burns detected." Gordon stops his unstoppable charge to catch his breath, and to... Uh, offer a friendly, wordless fistpound to Riva while he smokes from the energy impact. He doesn't really especially care if she takes it, but it's good to do while listening to the radio. Once that's all done, he confirms his suspicions. Not the school, not the library, at least not likely. The church -- was that where his allies were fighting some kind of foe? Maybe he should take the other? Stick to the City Hall approach, less windows, right? He breaks off into a run. Now that the scouts are down, he'd better make sure the information they got doesn't get put to good use. It's a quick inviting gesture to Hemlock to invite him along, calling out the all-clear, that's the most communicative he gets. Still pushing for that City Hall... At least, if he can get a view of that one specific piece of wreckage still.
Staren     On the bright side, the scouts are down! On the downside, another shot comes in -- the forcefield glows white as it absorbs the energy and more of it shatters away -- up close, it looks much thinner now than it did initially.

    Either way, it's time to find better cover now -- Staren tries to duck around another building to a position that he hopes is out of both snipers' line of sight. Then the radio transmission comes -- help is here! Well, he's just fine with that! With the sniper's visibility of him obscured, he hurries to take cover in the heaviest-walled building he can find while waiting for the counter-sniper to set up.

    He's got a vague plan in mind -- perhaps he could use one missile to draw their shot, then fire a salvo at the snipers' nest. But he'll wait for G&K's counter-sniper -- if necessary, he'll sacrifice another missile so they can get the shot.

    One way or another, the enemy's time is slowly running out. The ship draws closer. They couldn't possibly have the resources to stop a heavy artillery bombardment, right?

    Maybe that's their plan.

    Staren compares the apparent sniper positions to the possible hostage holding points. Would the enemy put them in the same position to trick G&K into killing their own?
Orchid      Suddenly, Orchid makes a U-turn. She's going to use the cover of smoke to grab Haguro, and get the pair out of the killing ground that Kaspar's artillery is about to create. This was the other reason she came, her skills with first aid and search & rescue.
Riva Banari Riva grunts as the scouts fall to pieces. She looks over the remains, and steps forward to wave to Hemlock and Gordon. "Yoooo." She says. "Everything okay over here?" She asks, grinning as she fistpounds Gordon. "Nice work there." She compliments... And then there's that explosion. She tilts her head as the radio crackles to life. A hand moves up to her ear as she transmits on the same band, following Gordon as they go. He looks like he knows what he's doing, so she's happy to just follow along and make sure people don't get shot.

Well, the people on her side anyway.

"Hey, you the Commander we were told to meet?" She asks over the band. "Do you have any intel on the area? Have a squad of three here on one flank near city hall. Any orders?"

Coordination is good.
Hemlock AS Riva and Gordon take out the scouts, and once they're done, Hemlock nods. "Thank you. I'll toss you some buffs as well." With another melodic whistle, the combat buffs are topped up, this time applied to Riva as well, as well as movement speed buffs so that they can get to their destination quicker. Hemlock listens over the band, not really recognizing the voice despite knowing he's heard it somewhere. He'll let Riva do the coordinating there.

Instead, Hemlock sticks to Gordon as he's invited along, moving to cover his back and try and get to the Town Hall as soon as possible. He's also trying to get a clear visual of the enemy T-Dolls if he can, so that he can get planning to use magic on them.
Gideon Kaspar     Haguro is momentarily safe as the smoke bursts all around her, covering her from view of a potentially lethal followup shot while she's downed and immobilized, and giving Orchid the time she needs to grab hold of her and drag her to safety, out of sight.

    The plaza is already enough of a killzone between the two snipers without flying right up into the air where there is no cover, and so Tomoe's aerial charge turns out to be a bad choice. Zooming towards the church, she can just make out the profile of a black and dark purple-clad figure swathed in a dull grey mantle, with an intimidatingly massive, sci-fi rifle stamped with the Sangvis Ferri logo braced over the safety rail of the bell tower, looking at her through a face-obscuring eyepiece. Though she gets the distinct impression the eerie Sangvis T-Doll is aiming at her, the shot doesn't come from the front, where she is focusing her evasive maneuvers, but as a blindside from the second sniper that had shot down Staren's missile. From out of her field of view, a blast comes in from her five o'clock, aimed directly at her back, specifically where her wings come out of. Staren may very well want to use the missile before the lead 'Jaeger' goes for the one-two.

    As promised, and right on time, the top of the bell tower suddenly explodes. It isn't a fiery detonation, like from a rocket, but the west wall explodes inwards and the east wall explodes outwards as something rips through it fast enough to leave a sonic wake. Whatever the hell Gideon's sniper is using, it isn't a standard maksman rifle, that's for sure. The Jaeger goes tumbling down from its perch, missing a third of its torso, and crashes without so much as a lifeless bounce six storeys down.

    The second Jaeger disappears from its perch, but a second later, a massive hole goes straight through a blank section of wall and punches deep into the inside of the building, apparently having estimated the target's movement without being able to see it through a window. The thundering boom of the first shot reaches the town slightly after the second bullet. "Autumn confirms two targets down. You're free to proceed." says Gideon through the radio, reporting on it as if it were the weather.
Gideon Kaspar     Either surprisingly or completely as logically expected, depending on one's point of view, he answers Riva immediately. "Krysanthe and Aer have cleared the library. VZ-61 still hasn't been located. If she's anywhere, she's where you're headed right now. I'll dispatch those two and Umbra as a second three-unit cell, entering through the rear emergency exit."

    "The area isn't all that special. A nowhere town with some minor relevance during World War III, re-settled by Sangvis Ferri company supported citizens a few years back, and evacuated due to the S09 incident. It's miles and miles from the nearest contaminated zone. You should be fine. Just hold the front entrance as long as you can and my girls will cut down the enemy from behind. The Ripper units are all operating off their on-board AI, so their tactics are undeveloped."

    Riva quickly finds out what a Ripper is when she, Gordon, and Hemlock end up breaking from the park path and ending up nearly on the steps of town hall, unfortunately surrounded by a low brick wall and many decorative pillars and small statues. It's plentiful cover on elevated ground for several squads of Sangvis T-Dolls, wearing the same black and purple, movie-esque aesthetic, and wielding those chunky futuristic carbines in each hand, each one completely identical to the last, down to the purple streaked hair. Within seconds of exiting the trees, they all come under fire, with a multitude of energy blasts raining on them from the town hall 'hill'.

    The number of units all dual wielding weapons makes for a worrying rate of fire that quickly blasts apart any trees or wreckage they want to use for cover, and the enemy T-Dolls actually use theirs professionally, not popping up and down like movie mooks. A wave of scouts also launches from the building's upper windows, flying overhead and strafing them where they can find anywhere decently out of the line of fire, keeping up the pressure. This building seems to be the most heavily defended, so it's likely their target location.
Haguro      Although Haguro's pride is quite wounded by this point, it's still nowhere near as painful as the literal burning pain in her chest from that concentrated sniper blast. She's certainly not going to turn down Orchid's helpd, trying to shift herself with the Reploid's movements so as to not slow her down too much.

     She even manages to mouth a quiet "thank you"! It's in between wheezing coughs, of course, but she's already starting to catch her breath once they're not in the killzone any longer.

     With the snipers taken out of the equation, though, and more conventional targets back on the battlefield, Haguro's quick to force herself back onto her feet. "Okay... It looks like we still need to clear the rest, so..." Haguro takes a few steady breaths to try and compose herself, although the massive quantity of blasts from the dual-wielding T-Dolls has her shivering again. She looks like a bit of a mess, but her guns are still working!

     Of course Haguro's going to start firing again. The anti-air flak is still loaded, and there's still those scouts coming out once more, so she goes back to plan A: Light up the sky! The only difference now is that she's crouched and decidedly not trying to stand on wobbly feet.
Staren     Staren is hiding. He has pictire-in-picture displays on his HUD checking the views available , when he spots Tomoe trying to... charge the sniper? <"Tomoe no!"> he warns, but too late. That means one sniper has used its shot. Staren fires a couple of plasma missiles up out the window -- they spread out enough so that one shot won't detonate both, then converge on the second sniper. One way or another, their immediate vicinity is toast.

    One of his missile racks is empty now. He's going to need a reload to use a full salvo. Not to self: Redesign missile racks so he can reload them while wearing them, somehow! Hmm, maybe if he put them on extending arms, that collapse and clamp into position when not in use... wait, no, focus on the current mission! (1/2)
Tomoe This was a veyr bad idea on tomoe's part it's too late though Tomoe is at the veyr least is drawing fire her way. She's focused on teh sniper ahead of her that her tatical awarenerss fails her about the second one, wait why is it not firing? A thought hit her a second sniper or a hidden second weapon the enemy fired remotedly and she's caught in the back. The good news for her the wings? Are a protection of her body so it's more her that will take the punnishes. The bad news is she will take the punnishmen she's hit there's a good dela of pain the entire splot is screaming red wireframes where it was hurt and Tomoe is spuring down to the groung below making one hell of a rough landing as she does so. Her health bar's in the mid yellow from that one hit, she's damn lucky she was a tank set up if not for her super human endurance and toughness, it would be even worse or full on fatal.

She's also showing signs of a good deal of pain as she slowly gets up and staggers trying to fall in with the rest, a bit wiser but the price was very high indeed for her.

Thanks to Staren she shouldn't get another hit and that might drop her out of Avatar state, hell it might out right kill her. She shure as hell owes Staren one for this...
Hemlock As the group reaches the town hall, there's more T-Dolls, and they're raining energy blasts on the group. The combat buffs Hemlock put up help him not get eviscerated, as does his pretty good mobility, but his jacket is torn up and he's burnt up, bad burns and marks all over his body. He rolls backwards in pain, grunting loudly, and takes a few moments to get behind the fighters and let them handle the combat part. With his buffs up, Hemlock's going to do something else.

The melody he begins to whistle is low and slow, something eerie that could be in a suspense movie trailer. One of the Rippers that isn't being focused on by Riva or Gordon will suddenly get slammed with mind-manipulating magic, trying to affect that on-board AI, and change her mission: 'The mission's changed. Your fellow units have been found to be compromised, and you must focus on their hinderance or destruction immediately. Once done, wait for reinforcements.' The orders try not to instruct her to hurt herself or throw herself out in the fire, because that's much easier to resist in Hemlock's experience.

Hopefully, unlike the weird creatures from that temple, T-Dolls can actually be mind-manipulated. If not, Hemlock's going to throw a fit once he gets home.
Staren     Staren's making his way to rejoin the others, but he can already see a problem: There's a LOT of robots on that hill, fighting tactically. He PROBABLY can't just hope to missile them from above. He considers possible scenarios...

    Firing all missiles in hopes of overwhelming their defenses... He'll be lucky to take down one doll per missile.

    Throwing smoke all over the place, using it as cover to shoot them, aiming with others' eyes... They'll all turn and shoot where his attacks come from. Is there no good move here?

    Hemlock's attempting to cause chaos. Staren decides to gamble on that being enough. In the street on his way to meet with the others, he raises his arms, and the forearm micromissiles launch as well as the remaining minimissile rack. All in all, 9 HEAT missiles, some miniaturized with future technology, arc over the town and come down at an angle, targeting specific rippers Staren can see through Orchid and Gordon's eyes. He'll just have to hope they're not good at shooting them down.
Orchid      Well, there had been a plan A. Orchid's current actions start with Haguro under cover, making sure she won't die, then diving right back into the action. "Maybe I should have stayed at home," she mutters. This time she's dashing over to Tomoe, her arms ready to scoop up the woman like a bride, taking her over the threshold into another building. Painkillers will be offered, a fast acting sort that you need a license to use.

     By now, Orchid's spiders should have reached the town hall hill, and will be climbing the defenses. Their mission? Get inside, get past the defenders, and let the tactical net know what is inside the building, and where it is. They're particularly looking for VZ-61, and what part of the building she is in. Failing that, they can distract the defenders from Orchid's allies. The ones with guns.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon suffers a brutal rain of fire the moment the group breaks out of the trees. "Major contusions detected." His suit helpfully informs him as he dives into cover. "Power at fifty percent." The rippling surface of the HEV suit seems immediately less energetic. Sadly, it's clear that this isn't viable either. Scouts make staying in cover a bad idea, even as Gordon tries to knock them out of the air with a heavy crossbow.

    He can hear Staren calling in an artillery strike from Haguro. For such an uncommunicative man, it almost seems like the knowledge prompts him to start softly counting down under his breath and HOPING. He peppers flankers, blasting away, until... Here comes Staren's artillery fire. He dives in as fast as he can, rushing with enhanced speed. Shotgun out, blast away. He gives them both barrels of the combat shotgun, trying to stun the humanoids the way he did before, and dive between and inside. He needs smaller spaces! Closer quarters! He has to get inside, hopefully timing his rush just after Staren's artillery strike, and then just /before/ Haguro's.

    This would be a great plan to /tell/ either of them. WHOOPS.
Haguro      After firing only a single volley of anti-air flak, Haguro holds her fire. A new plan has come in over the radio, and she switches gears quickly, swapping a shoulder turret's ammunition to more conventional shells. She aims high, however, acting as a mortar this time around!

     She just hopes she's not going to end up accidentally hitting the building in such a strained state. There's plenty of gunfire going on already, the fliers are an ever present threat, /and/ she has to make sure she's going to hit the Rippers instead of literally anything else! No pressure.

     Some pressure. A lot of pressure. She holds her breath as she tweaks her firing angle, tries to account for wind, and starts firing in a high arc!
Riva Banari "Acknowledged." Riva replies, then looks to her allies of the moment. "We're going to have a second squad coming in to reinforce. The commander agrees on the call. Let's get to it."

Riva breaks through the cover, and the hellish fire drops. Riva immediately takes a fusillade to the chest that slams her right onto her back, her chest smoking and clothing burned. She lies there for several seconds, staring up into the air with arms and legs splayed out as if she just got straight up murdered.

"Ow." She says, and stirs, sitting back up with a groan. "Okay, that sucks." She leaps to one side, firing a few times to try to suppress the enemies, rolling to find her own cover. "This is going to be ugly. They're pretty entrenched, aren't they?" She asks the others. At that, she drops her gun and plunges a hand into a ripple in space, pulling out a long tube and a pack of heavy-looking rockets. Wait, is that...

She breaks out the handles and a sight, grinning through her pain as she locks the rocket into place. "Well, time to even the score." She says, leaning around to sight against not the Rippers themselves, but the walls they're hiding behind. "FIRE IN THE HOLE!" She yells, as a golden light builds around the shell, gleaming energy surging around the shell, before the enchanted rocket launcher fires.
Gideon Kaspar     Though the Rippers are deeply entrenched behind plentiful and convenient cover, it's turn of the 20th rural community construction, not built for modern military action. The brick walls and pillars might stand up to old rifle and shotgun fire, but not a combined bombardment from Riva, Staren, and Haguro.

    A magically charged rocket blows a wide, smoking hole through the exterior wall perimeter, sending a scrapped Ripper flying through the air and crumpling unnaturally on the stairs, and two more diving for cover to either side, giving Gordon a clear avenue to charge right through. Flying missiles and battleship shells collide with monuments and architecture, blowing up even more cover in violent fireballs. When the Rippers realize they're under fire, they're quick to move out of the way, shifting from position to position away from the blasts, but several of them are taken out immediately first, and the amount of cover dwindles very rapidly, until some of them are forced to stand out in plain view and just attempt to gun Gordon and Riva down under sheer volume of fire. They're blasted away quickly with a few direct hits from the combat shotgun and the remaining shellfire from Haguro as the scouts are picked out of the air by her AA and the crossbow.

    Gordon will be able to properly blitz inside from there, albeit soaking a few more shots to the face. Most of Orchid's drones join him shortly thereafter, only a few having been shot or blown up in the crossfire outside. When they enter however, Gordon only has to CQC a couple of Rippers before he comes across the main hall thoroughly full of holes and littered with the bullet-riddled corpses of further Sangvis T-Dolls, draped over desks and benches and scattered across the floor. They appear to have been taken by surprise, judging how many have been shot in the back or the head.

    As promised, three of G&K's T-Dolls practically ghost right by him, one recognizable in white, black, and gold leading the triangle, with another in crisp whites, greys, and sky blues, and a third wearing significantly less tactical gear, with dark clothes and oddly luminous green eyes. All of them are wielding SMGs of various makes with attached suppressors, and the last couple of Rippers active in the building drop dead with Hollywood-esque fwips of automatic fire.

    They go as far as the main entrance behind him, taking their own cover on the interior side, before the black-dressed one chucks out another smoke grenade directly into the enemy formation this time, halting their gunfire as they're suddenly completely unable to see where they're shooting, and the white and gold one with silver hair slings a grenade at them that goes up a colossal fireball, pulsing out a deafening *fwoom* followed by throwing around enough incendiary gel to turn more of the outer wall into literal lava. The lead T-Doll makes a silent hand motion at Gordon to proceed.
Gideon Kaspar     Hemlock outside finds that the AI of the remaining Sangvis T-Dolls is ostensibly extremely simplistic. Though there are certainly tactical routines in use, huge chunks of their cognitive capabilities seem to be 'empty space', as best as it can be put, as if left that way as vessels for something. His magic seems to /work/, but as soon as the one doll is compromised, the others turn on it in an instant, slagging it under a hail of particle fire before it can turn on them.

    Drones searching through the building find plenty of cameras and sensors set up around the place, but with nobody to attend to them, they're just superfluous, creepily staring eyes. There are a number of interior defenses, but the tripwires and automatic turrets have been disabled by Gideon's team already, save for the highest floors. As the gunfight wraps up outside with the last few exchanged shots, the Sangvis Ferri T-Dolls stubbornly fighting until the last of them breaks, Orchid manages to locate the mayor's office on the top floor, with a window overlooking the space behind the building where familiar aerotech wreckage can be seen.

    The prisoner, as it were, isn't even one they've bothered to tie up or anything. The blonde T-Doll from the video is so beaten up and burnt, without any hope of repair in sight, that there would be no point in trying to break out anyways. The sounds of battle dying down outside leave her cautiously eyeing the door, and then the window in sequence, before struggling to her feet and limping towards the office doors, supporting herself with one hand on the wall, determined to at least find a radio or something.

    There's no sign of this 'Scarecrow' anywhere; just the autonomous rear guard remains. It's basically as if the place has been abandoned by the higher tactical decisionmakers again, already vacated of the important enemy before the Elites arrive for a second time.
Haguro      Hearing that the shooting has finally died down, Haguro lets out a weary sigh as she collapses back and rubs that massive energy burn on her chest. "All clear outside. If-"

     She stops herself abruptly, then ducks her head down. No sense tempting fate twice today. "... If the target's been secured, let's regroup and get out of here. We can relax once we've returned to safer territory."
Hemlock To Hemlock's pleasure, the magic actually works...the units are just too unified for it to do what he wants it to do. This is useful for future missions, however, as he can now confirm he can manipulate these things as he needs to. His job here is practically done, though.

Hemlock will move for a retreat, though as he does so, if any of the Sangvis Ferri dolls continue to pursue or assault, he whistles for a sharp sonic blast to try and cut into them and take care of that. Otherwise, he's returning now that the others will have their target.
Orchid      Is this the robot they are here to rescue? If so, one of the spiders just happens to be one of a new variant Orchid equipped for SAR work. It's not that huge of a change, basically a tiny little banner that the spider can unroll and hold up. Written on the sign are the words, "Help is on the way!"

     Look, no one said it was a FANCY mod.

     On the outside, Orchid is approaching the town hall, but only carefully, given that she likes her head in the number of pieces it currently is: one.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon feels so much better about being in /proper/ interior spaces. He just can't deal with open battles like that! Gordon works in fine, silent tandem with the others, nodding and holding his SMG in a ready position to continue. He surges into the area, moving in and following Orchid's tactical network to zero in on the prisoner, gun at the ready... but no further combat needs doing after all this clearing out, it seems. By the time she's on her feet, he's probably at the door, immediately holstering the weapons to support her and help her with both hands. "Steady." Like the last operation, he's spoken an entire one word. He offers his own HEV suit radio, operated from the wrist, for her to speak into, and tries to guide her towards the G&K operators.

    As in all cases before, the most important part is humanitarian determination. He's focused in on this with laser precision. Orchid's a robotics repair expert, right? Gordon pinks his distress beacon for her to zero in on, and heads towards his fellow Paladin, as well as Staren; the boy genius is mildly notorious among the scientific community for reasons that will go unexplained for now, but at least they let Gordon know he's probably gonna be good at robotics.
Tomoe Tomoe would normally argue about the being bridal carried, thankfully though she's fair bit shorter in this apperance than she is normally, so it's not quite as silly looking as it could be, she's thankful for the help thought. She pauses at the painkillers.

"No, I need to keep my head clear...I'll get something ugg after this is over."

She will keep her spear at the ready and follow along with Orchid, without thinking she's moving to cover the Reploid with herself, the human is trying to tank for you even hurt. Tomoe is not the brightest when it comes to things like this.
Riva Banari After the hole is blasted into the lines, Riva stows the launcher and picks up her shotgun again, leaping forward and beginning to unleash blasts of shotgun to cut down the incoming fire. That's not to say that she doesn't take more fire, but less is better. By the time things are cleared up outside, she's walking up into the building with a grimace, reloading her gun again. "We clear in here?" She asks, looking around... And nods. "Looks like it." She slumps against the wall, sighing in relief as she waits for her wounds to close up.

At least they weren't bullets. It always feels weird to have your body spit out bullets. The techies can secure the T-Doll before she can work on covering the extraction.

That said, she watches the others, tilting her head as she observes the other T-Doll squad. "Lots of fun." She comments idly. "Get this often?"
Staren     It's over by the time Staren's able to actually reach the building. He's watching through Orchid's drones too, and winces at the state of the G&K android. He hopes she was able to turn off pain. He briefly wonders if it's possible that 'Scarecrow' transferred into this body, killing the original, but is assured that the enemies aren't sophisticated enough to do that and they'll notice any personality change.

    He makes his way over to where the others are. He's ready to offer quick evac by beaming up to his ship for any who want it -- he'll probably reach a warpgate faster than the helicopter will. The android might want to return with the G&K troops anyway, though. Staren only gives her a brief look over. G&K is surely about to take her back to repair technicians, so there's no need for him, unfamiliar with her construction, to try to patch her up. <"Thanks for the support, by the way. Would've taken us a lot longer to deal with those snipers otherwise.">
Gideon Kaspar     With the first few Ripper units inside blasted down by Gordon, and the remainder wiped out by the SMG infiltrator team, it's a simple process to retrieve the PoW. Krysanthe sends the edgy, black-dressed and slightly dishevelled companion out to get her, remaining behind with the others herself. She looks at Riva with a flat, amber stare in a way that kind of oozes sympathetic pessimism. "A T-Doll's life is battle. This was a small operation . . . but I didn't like the thought of leaving a fellow T-Doll here. Even without the vital data, the Commander isn't the kind to leave one behind anyways, so I suppose I'm grateful for the opportunity." The white-haired, blue-dressed one interjects cooly. "We're definitely tracking down 'Scarecrow' next. I doubt it'll be this easy. Not that I'd mind putting a bullet or ten in her." Staren's thanks goes unanswered for a minute, before Krys answers him instead. "Autumn doesn't talk much. Part of being a sniper, I guess. No one likes dealing with Jaegers, even last generation models."

    The blonde T-Doll is quickly escorted out of the mayor's office by the black one, with odd 'stitches' on her arms on closer inspection, actually. She holds up 'VZ-61' with an arm under hers, propping her up on the way down the stairs. "Am I dreaming?" she says, sounding part shellshocked and part stress-humour. The black-haired T-Doll shrugs and says "Don't be a dumbass. Can we even dream?" "R-right." When the two arrive at the first floor, Krys has to check, using a quick, flat, businesslike tone. "How much does the enemy know about M-4." The blonde proudly responds "Not a thing! I only gave them false information! For the sake of my companions, even those I thought I'd lost, I'd never surrender to someone like that!"

    Gideon's primary 'second in command' manages to somehow look relieved without looking any less dour. "I'm glad. We'll have to find out Scarecrow's objective when we capture her later. In the meantime, command badly needs the information you have on the whereabouts of the A-R team. We have reason to believe they have vital information on Sangvis Ferri, and are currently being pursued. Time is of the essence, so I hope the snipe hunt you sent Scarecrow on keeps her occupied for a while."
Orchid      Orchid shakes her head at the story. If requested, she'll gladly fix up the former prisoner, making sure everything is comfortable for travel to a place where she can get proper repairs. This may involve a number of spider-silk bandages.