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Gideon Kaspar     SP721 'Hunter' is the designation that Griffin&Kryuger has dug up on the advanced Sangvis Ferri T-Doll --a ringleader-- prowling this area. One that had laid patiently in wait while Scarecrow cracked M-4's location in her last moments, and immediately after M-4 had slipped through Executioner's fingers fingers anyways, taking to hunting down the rest of her squad. Details are extremely slim on this model, excessively patient and indirect compared to the others, but after a couple of strategy meetings, and the successful recovery of S-2, the fact that Hunter will not be found if she's trying not to be has become evident, and the fact that A-15 has no means of contacting HQ while leading her on as far as she can is already known.

    That means setting bait. Scouting teams following the scattered trail of destruction left by Hunter's forces have tracked them to their last known location before moving on, and set up communications equipment of their own, hooking it up to a satellite feed to broadcast it over the net of Hunter's projected next position. The other two members of the Anti-Rain squad are present, specifically as a call-out. G&K expects that even if Hunter doesn't take the bait immediately, she can't ignore the T-Doll that Sangvis Ferri has been after for months is right there.

    To A-15's credit, she's taken Hunter through already depopulated zones so far, long evacuated, broken down and overgrown in what looks to be the wake of an older war; probably older than T-Dolls. It makes whatever recent combat damage there has been from a result of A-15 clashing with hunting packs blend into the surroundings, already damaged by shells forever ago. It makes for a total lack of trouble establishing a comms beacon, a computer terminal, a recording station, listening post, and the general crates and bags and benches that come along with this sort of thing.

    "This should be pretty simple; enough that I'm sure you get it already. We're looking for Hunter to make contact, and once she does, I need you to trace her back through whatever means you can. If any of you are capable of holding her attention, try to keep her on the phone as long as you can. Once we've pinpointed here, we'll make an immediate high speed attack; we have aircraft on standby for it already. Figure it out yourselves, so places people!" Gideon ends with a clap-clap, having come out to the field this time. It helps that he has all the keys to the G&K gear, but he'd also insisted on not leaving M-4 physically alone with even a communicator with Hunter on the other end.
Haguro      The last time Haguro had fought against Sangvis Ferri alongside Gideon's T-Dolls, she had been in a different state of mind. A different physical state, too, that probably wouldn't have looked out of place if she wasn't decked out in turrets and armor plates.

     This time, however, her armor looks much more like those very T-Dolls Gideon's allies would be poised to face. Her hair is white, her purple and white uniform has been replaced with a completely black affair, and she has a funky twin-headed tail with turrets coming out of her gut.

     "So we... Shouldn't attack immediately? O-okay. If anyone here is good at talking, then that might help keep her distracted." She glances from Gideon towards the other Elites hopefully, shifting around a bit uncomfortably as the heads hang limply over her shoulder.

     Both heads also appear to be breathing. "If Hunter starts attacking her own target, though, sh... Should we prioritize protecting her target or following Hunter back?"
Nova Terra     Nova is... Kicking back. Relaxing. She's sitting on an empty cargo container, back propped up against another one as she relaxes, doing absolutely nothing. Her rifle rests against the side of one of the containers. She's definitely working hard at hardly working.

    Just beside the cargo containers, not far from the G&K outpost that had been set up, an SCV is working hard at building something. Hovering around on its jets, its laser welder sizzles along the metal as it puts all the pieces of the quickly growing tower into place. Soon enough the tower comes to life, lights beginning to flash.

    The SCV backs off for a moment to examine its work, before hovering over to Nova's position and reporting, "Ma'am. The Sensor Tower is complete."

    Nova opens an eye to peer at it, saying, "Good good. Take a break." The SCV hovers away again and Nova taps the side of her visor, "Reigel, the tower is up. Can you establish a link?"

    Up in orbit, directly above the mission zone, the Dominion stealth frigate, Griffin, floats along stealthily. On the bridge, Nova's technical advisor, Reigel, starts tapping away at one of the consoles. Soon enough live sensor data starts coming in, showing footage of the immediate area around the tower as well as readings from further away. He comms back to Nova, "Affirmative. I'm ready to begin."

    Back down on the planet, Nova gives a thumbs up to Gideon, "All good to go! The Griffin should be able to help track the signal."
Tomoe Tomoe says "So you need us to somehow keep her talking if we managed to get her on the line? Know anything about her behaviour?" Tomoe then stumbles over her words as she see san Abyssal walk in and it takes her a bit to even click that its Haguro? She stares at Haguro and starts to look very uncomfortable right about now as she resolves to keep an eye on her. She looks over to Nova for a moment as the SCV has finished up their work and has got themselves a break.

"Well then there's not much more to do then to go out and move to find the VIP?"

With Haguro's question it is a good one to know what Griffon wants she has an idea of how it goes but having a confirmation as what to do.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon regards Gideon kind of like he's trying to calculate an incredibly complex problem. Uhhhh... keep her on the phone? He blinks several times and stares to the others. Haguro gets a look from him, a helpless sort of expression best depicted as something like ":T". Partially because of how different she looks (he doesn't exactly keep up with that business) and partially because he's the opposite of what she asked for. He shrugs, and nods firmly in the direction of others. Yeah, they're gonna have to be the ones to do it. Gordon, as ever, is not even remotely talkative.

    Dr. Kleiner is here, though! "Ah, most fascinating. A learning machine like her would have to be exposed to quite a strange bit of novel content to draw her attention!"
    "One-sided conversation." Gordon says, to Kleiner. And just about nothing else; he's said all he wants to.
    "Hmmm? One-sided... Oh, I believe I understand! We have three of the four Anti-Rain squad here, don't we? I wonder... The Sangvis Ferri Ringleaders are terribly obsessive. We might be able to bait them into communication and a pursuit most desperate, if we can fool them into thinking that A-15 has escaped or bamboozled them, and is near us!" He gestures strongly, finger up and insightful.

    "We need only pretend to be receiving the transmission from elsewhere... Perhaps we could even have someone move to make the false transmission themselves, obscured and obfuscated to make it hard to tell it's not A-15? Great Scott, to think like some sort of, of, of intelligence operative is quite difficult. Do the rest of you have any plans?" He adjusts his glasses, peering at the others.
Tony Stark The whole thing was frustrating. Not, generally, Sangvis Ferri or the mission.

It was the waiting. Tony Stark had people for waiting. An ambush, a stakeout, it wasn't the direct path. It wasn't the short path.

Certainly, the diligent one, but it wasn't his speed. So, for most of the time, Tony Stark reclined in a well-dressed heap, messing with a fold-out laptop with holographic screen, messing with a complex set of charts and data values that don't entirely make sense without the mental context of whatever Stark's working on.

On the other hand, the latest model of the Iron Man pans its impassive mask back and forth while the onboard AI collated data and assisted with the electronic baffling of their little hidey-hole.

"Doctor Kleiner, you're a genius! Well, I suppose you already knew that. With Nova's sensor tower and my on-board tactical analysis suite, we should be able to focus in the signal very quickly. But as for spoofing a T-Doll..."

Stark shakes his head. "Unless Kaspar has some special trick, I couldn't make up a neural network on the fly to handle being M-4 or any other bait."

A look crosses his eyes. "But... I could probably make a pretty reasonable facsimile, as we are in a war zone. Is there any place closeby with a large amount of... gamma radiation? Either that, or electromagnetic interference: something that'd plausibly garble or damage a signal? That way, any imperfections in our subterfuge would be..."

Stark spreads his hands. "Well, part of the bait."

Stark pointedly Does Not Stare at Haguro. He has been Not Staring at her all evening. It's that deliberate sort of Not Staring.
Raziel     Raziel understands the basics, bait out one of the T-dolls, hold them either through conversation or other means...and then they should be able to track her. This one is slippery, and does not prefer to fight directly. While Raziel believes in honor and direct conflict, his fighting style relies on finesse, so he understands the basics of a fighting style like this, and both it's strengths and weaknesses. Nevermind, his bothers were like this, but beyond that the many things these people were talking about...

    'Once more, aiding these 'Tactical Dolls' and their leader. Hopefully, this time things would not end with me waking up in the Abyss on Nozgoth again. However, as things settle out, I feel there is a over complexity going into the things they were discussing. Still...I suppose it would be a limitation of my knowledge of the outside, or if my feelings were correct.'

    Raziel, however, decided to stay in the physical world...for now, there was no need to shift yet, as in theory hiding and revealing himself when they were supposed to be communicating would do little more than hinder the situation at late.
Gideon Kaspar     "Did you really have to call in a ship called the Griffin?" Gideon asks with a flat, dead stare, before just sighing and pushing his fingers through his hair, straightening out his red officer's jacket and his tie. "Fine, fine. Knowing how this goes, I'll probably appreciate it by the end of today." Taking a spot at the console, he says to Haguro "You respond to any kind of combat whatsoever with lethal force. Doesn't matter what type. Understood?"

    He folds his fingers and considers what Tony and Kleiner are on about over a long pause. "I can-" "We need Clover here and on the phone. Hunter verifying that she's here and having to come get her is what we want. Rose has Anti-Rain band authentification, but-" "Yeah! I'll smash her to pieces!" "-someone needs to supervise her. If you're looking for contaminated zones . . . honestly, you'd best not. Not a lot of nukes dropped, and we're miles out of our way of the habitable border. A trashed communicator is more believable. She hasn't made any kind of supply rendezvous for over a month now; it's not unlikely. You can fake phoning from a broken PoS right? Pick a buddy and-" "I want to kick her ass!" "-don't go too far."

    After waiting for the spoof team to make their arrangements, the comms array is flicked on, and straight away the Griffin picks up an incoming transmission, having located the source of its signal before it'd broadcasted anything but dead air. The second the communicator spins up its hologram, Gideon contacts Helian back at base and begins the trace process through satellite.

    The T-Doll 'on screen' is their first opportunity at catching any more than a glimpse of acid green eyes in the dark before someone gets slagged. Still in some kind of shadowed place, they can't make out more than the fact she's as archetypically pale and black-dressed as the others, in some sort of highly cut down jacket over a black and white partial bodysuit, with massive, mechanized weapon holsters attached to her waist that are each large enough for a small rifle. Pretty much all the details of her face are still obscured aside from the stand-out eye glow.

    "Humph. You really did come back, M-4. Not a wise move, but I won't complain. Let's talk. As you've probably guessed, I have A-15."" "You're bluffing. We already know where A-15 is. You don't have any leverage, so you're going to listen to me." says Clover suddenly, without so much as taking a bracing breath. "Even if that were true, it wouldn't matter. G&K can't take this place on short notice. There's no point in keeping up a stalemate. You can chase after her forever, or you can surrender M-4 to me. Yes I'm talking to the rest of you. I know you're listening."
Nova Terra     "Yeah, I did." And it's certainly a good thing Nova did. With more powerful sensors and computing power compared to her suit, not to mention a small military force waiting in its cargo bay for launch orders, Nova is definitely glad to have the Griffin around. Naming issues aside.

    As the comm signal begins, Nova sits up a bit more attentively, whisper into her radio, "It's beginning."

    On the Griffin, Reigel replies, "Understood. Signal identified." He turns his head to one of the bridge crew, "Coordinate the trace with the G&K network." To another he orders, "Relay the readings to Mister Stark." He then goes back to looking at his own console, typing rapidly.

    Back down on the surface, Nova snorts derisively at the offer of surrendering the T-Doll. Not likely. Though Nova herself remains out of the conversation, not the best negotiator when she can't read the other's mind.
Tony Stark Arrangements, huh?

Tony 'closes' the laptop screen by making a closing motion - and the holography shutting off, the half-a-laptop folding up into something palm-sized that Tony slots back onto his watch face.

"Right. That means Gordon and I will get some distance, bring..." Tony trails off, pensive.

"Well, Doctor Freeman, I'll leave it up to you. I can probably handle Rose and the delicate stuff, and you probably want to stick with Clover and Doctor Kleiner."

"We'll make noise if we find any Sangvis Ferri, trust me." Stark asides, as he finishes settig up. There's a terrible realization as Stark steps into the Iron Man suit that opens up as he approaches, closing over his body: Rose is just VERBALLY awful, but the genuis in a power suit was essentially planning around sending a dangerous psycopathic allied murder robot into the thicker end of things... because he was also too impatient to sit tight with a mission on the line.

SOON

The call begins, and Stark (and probably Rose and assorted) having set up in a bombed-out lower story of a building, the Mark 43 digitally spoofing a damaged communicator through the suit's communication systems.

"Rose, whenever you wanna get started. I'll handle the spoofing. Otherwise, we may miss the party."

MEANWHILE

M-4 is a badass and Stark can't quip about Hunter getting >>_ Not Told x Told<<
Tomoe Tomoe now has an understanding of the mission objectives. She gets a good look at Hunter and can't help but feel she would fit in visually with the Abyssals. She thinks about that for half a second as she listens she's not the front line talker here she knows that, Tony Stark? Raziel is better than her as far as she sees it. Heck, the only person she might be able to do better than here might be Gordon and then again he's quite good at keeping things brief.

Still the fact that the enemy T-doll knows they are listening is either a caulated move or they eyes on them. That has Tomoe looking abotu for anything that might give away a hint to them being watched as well, while the tech people like Tony, Gordon and Nova's people do their thing.
Raziel     Raziel is trying to logic out the situation...

    If someone, good at deception and harrassment as she claims to be...why would she speak over this. Obviously she would have knowledge of this technology, or perhaps it is arrogance or simply simple desire for the unit in question. It's possible, but even still, he finds it hard to believe she would not have some sort of plan, and perhaps even the finesse to pull it off. That, or she is playing the same game they are?

    He decides to not say anything for the moment, shifting realms does not seem the best idea either, assuming she had already saw that ability...then again, she would have also seen him die.

    A lot of this simply has him over his head in all of this. However, despite this, there seems to be a little of the classic tactics still in play...modernality sure changed things, but a lot still remains the same.

    Taking a breath, there is not much he can do but wait.
Haguro      "A-alright. That'll make things easier, then." As quiet as she is, Haguro seems pretty okay with being able to blast away instead of just tracking should things come to blows. Tomoe gets a cursory glance from the Abyssal cruiser, that discomfort drawing an awkward wave and quick look away as Gordon gives her that :T face. Recalling their previous operations in this area, she nods knowingly before listening to Kleiner's suggestion.

     "That's a good plan, yes... Um. Is...?" Tony's distinct not-looking-at-her gets Haguro's attention, and it prompts a whole lot of staring from the boatgirl. It takes a few moments before she finally looks away, turning around to not make it too obvious that she's sniffing her tailheads' mouths.

     Well, she /has/ been eating lots of wrecked vehicles lately.

     With the plan set and eyes in both the sky and on the ground ready, Haguro gets into position! She's got her boots on the ground, moving about and sticking to whatever cover she can find without any particular destination in mind. She's lingering near the hologram's general region, though, trying to catch a glimpse of anyone or anything else in the area.

     Who knows? Maybe she'll be lucky enough to run into Hunter by complete accident.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon draws his heavy crowbar and places it firmly and squarely between Hunter on-screen and Clover in a protective posture, as if Hunter might slyly emerge from the surface of the display and try to snatch her like an urban horror story about a cursed tape. There's an ominous shake of his head. It's a wordless motion, but one full of meaning, a statement that yes, he is here, and no, he's not going to surrender Clover to his foe.

    He taps something on his HEV suit's wrist, gesturing a little as he does. "Communications interface online. Attempting to clear interference." A gentle, even slightly smug claim that Hunter is only interference. However, of course, his suit is no high-power cutting-edge piece of hardware that could truly, properly clear the air of Hunter's influence. Which means he can properly try to use it at its full capacity and have it properly fail to do so.

    Gordon's goal, of course, is twofold: First, display his (authentic) concern and care for the Anti-Rain squad, every membber. Second, display a false confidence in his own position and what he's doing. After all, Hunter may feel more inclined to make it clear that he's wrong if he demonstrates being clearly wrong in a smaller way. It could keep her on the line.

    With Tony acting as the fake relay, he taps at his wrist, as if trying to jostle an antenna into place. He's hoping that some kind of scrambled noises similar to A-15's voice might come to him soon. "Attempting to clear interference. Attempting to clear interference." The HEV suit pointlessly tries to de-noise a signal that doesn't have the noise he's trying to remove. And now Gordon's further intentions: The implication that it's only a matter of time until they get to what he thinks the TRUE A-15 is, to add the tiniest aspect of potentially dramatic risk for Hunter. If he knows military learning machines, he knows that they take a strong depth-first approach to searches when it comes to finding dangerous risk factors.

    And all without speaking a single word. But, someone else should probably still help out with actual speaking on the topic.
Gideon Kaspar     "You've somehow tricked humans into doing your bidding. Admirable. They're right to want you. I have proof, though." says 'Hunter' when Gordon jumps in the way. "So do we. Quit trying." says Clover, as he hits his communicator. With Tony and Rose set up, Gideon hits the comm splice into Gordon's feed.

    "Ahhh, what would A-15 say though?" Rose asks herself, a few moments before the line even comes on. "Probably something annoying and serious. Like ah . . . 'a real hunter would keep silent'! Or something like that. Yeah!" Whatever she actually decides on is pretty much so much garbage when fed through Tony's filter, easily able to adjust to whatever he wants having already received both footage and audio during holoconferencing from A-15 in past. It's difficult to tell past the slightest narrowing of the twin neon green glows on the display that Hunter may be affording Gordon a shred of credibility.

    The pause where she checks the credentials is obvious. "You had access to our tactical network from the start, right? You were following our movements the whole time. A-15 knew it already; she only used it to draw you away. That's how Sangvis Ferri located myself and the others." "That would have been convenient, but you should already know by now that your position was given away by that piece of junk Scarecrow interrogated. Remember?" "No. You're wrong. Griffin has already confirmed from her memory logs that she fed you nothing but false information."

    Speaking of Griffin, the ship inconveniently bearing the name has picked up contact on the sensor net already, far away, but closing in on Tony's and Rose's position. "Griffin's T-Dolls aren't nearly as sophisticated as to be able to lie to me." "What do you mean?" "Your primitive AI technicians aren't capable of getting a machine to fabricate completely new information. When a T-Doll lies, all they do is take the truth and introduce layers of errors, rearranging it in a randomized way. Once you know that, it's simple to analyze the information, given three samples regarding the same question. Why would anyone need to interrogate a T-Doll otherwise?" "I . . . how do you know that for certain? Shouldn't you have been able to tell whenever I tricked you before then?" "If you were that ordinary, command wouldn't want you. That woman . . . you have no idea how special you are, do you." "Then come and get me instead of A-15!" "Of course. Once you drop your weapons and come to me instead. It's like you said. I only need you. A-15 is only a bargaining chip. If you won't take her, I'll just destroy her."
Gideon Kaspar     If Hunter buys it, the threat is legit; or at least an attempt to verify, tie up loose ends, and persuade Clover with some recorded prisoner footage. Tony and Rose make hard contact immediately, dozens of signatures showing up on the periphery of Tony's radar, easily tracked through the ship's sensor, closing in at high speed. Higher speed than Prowlers or Drones.

    Checking out from hiding, the sight that greets them is either DARPA's feverish nightmare or wet dream depending on how evil one imagines them to be. Packs of quadrupedal, vaguely dog-like, black mechanical creatures come charging through the brush and crumbling ruins from all directions, handling the terrain with that exclusively eerie Boston Dynamics demo video kind of ease. Painted in the Sangvis Ferri colour scheme, they have almost nothing in the way of physical features, and their central body is little more than a heavy, boxy unit for the legs, with a great big red optical lens at its forefront, visibly swiveling and scanning in rapid, schizophrenic movements.

    It might be fitting that hunting dogs would be the unit of choice for a ringleader designated Hunter. They sniff out the spoofed signal without fail, swarming together in a wave. At first it isn't really clear what they intend to do, but once they get uncomfortably close, their optical apparatus turns out to double as a laser weapon, as the real deal of invisible x-ray spectrum beams sizzle through the air en mass and jointly vapourize huge chunks of Tony's cover, spraying molten metal and earth all over.
Haguro      It's dogs. Of course it had to be dogs. Watching those robot quadrupeds come out of the woodwork to converge on the spoofed signal, Haguro moves to intercept some of the robots firing on Tony's position. Her tail-heads awaken as the lasers grow more intense, and she even winces at the tail getting shot at, never mind taking some nasty burns herself with the sheer volume of lasers going around.

     "It's just like fighting a dog with a... Laser cannon. Aim for the... Um.. Aim for... All of it!" Unable to come up with a specific weakpoint, Haguro opts for a tried and true strategy: Indiscriminate fighting.

     "If they're like the other SV dolls... Um... Tr-try getting closer!" The guns on her tail heads start firing shells to offer some suppressing fire against the hunting dog-likes while Haguro herself advances steadily, aiming to get close enough that she can start swinging the tail around like a massive bludgeon or even grab the robots themselves and commence swinging them more directly.

     After all, if she's going to suggest getting close, she might as well be the guinea pig.
Nova Terra     Reigel frowns a little as the results from the trace come in. It's fairly simple to project the course of the source, right towards the spoof location set up by Stark. Reigel decides it best to inform him, "We have coordinates. Mister Stark, the signal source appears to be heading in your direction." Warning delivered, Reigel returns to analysing the scans they have of that area.

    Only, Reigel is quickly interupted by Nova, "Reigel, drop a supply depot at..." Beep, "These coordintes."

    Reigel raises an eyebrow at the display as the coordinates pop up, "Are you sure, Nova? That's right in the middle of the projected battlefield."

    "Yeah, I'm sure!" Then off mic she says, "Hey you, get over here!" Reigel looks a little confused, but follows Nova's request regardless. With a few simple commands into his console, he begins the process for a supply drop.

    The Griffin's cargo bay door opens into space. A compact structure of some sort floats out, before thruster kick in and blast it down towards the planet's surface. Fire quickly rises up around it as it hits the atmosphere.

    A group of the robotic hunting dogs are suddenly subjected to a structure plumetting straight towards them, threatening to flatten them if they don't jump out of the way in time! The structure hits the ground hard, avoiding being smashed to pieces by the impact thanks to braking thrusters. The structure still manages to half bury itself with the impact, but otherwise survives relatively intact.

    The robots will only have a short time to harass the structure before they suddenly find themselves taking long-range fire. Specifically, from Nova. Who's currently riding atop the SCV, which is burning its thrusters hard as it rushes towards the dropped supply depot. Even with the shaking of the utility mech beneath her, Nova still manages to send some accurate shots towards the machine dogs, hopefully taking a few out and discouraging the rest from touching the structure.

    Finally Nova jumps off the SCV and onto the top of the depot in one swift move. Once more raising her rifle, she begins to fire towards the hostile machines from her raised position, while shouting to the SCV pilot, "Perdition turrets, now!"

    Used to working in the middle of a battle, the SCV pilot reponds, "Yes, Ma'am!" Its thrusters still glowing hot from nearing overload, the SCV begins to get to work. Compartments in the the supply depot slide open and the SCV pulls out some prefab modules with its large clamp, placing them on the ground before beginning to unpack and construct. All the while Nova is firing round after round to keep the dogs busy and away from the SCV.
Tomoe They keep Hunter on the line long enough and she learns something about the T-dolls that she's been working alongside when it comes to lying. She notes that for later use if she might have need of it. She doesn't get to do much more as soon as the signal stops she gets a sight of enemy drones which are opening up on Tony already. Tomoe summons her weapons and will move to charge into the ranks of the assaulting drones. She clearly trying to get into the thick of it and tie them up, she makes note of the lenses and she'll start attacking them with hit and run attacks, using the terrain and sometimes even the drone aa means to vault around as she makes her opening attacks on the horde.

She's clearly trying to keep their attention of her allies at this point. It's her job to get beat the hell up so they do not get the same thing happening to them.
Raziel     Raziel turns towards the 'dogs', screwtanizing them for a moment. There was something with this...and then a calm word. "If she had her, then she would be doing more than bluffing without proof. Any kind of evidence now could pass through basic screwtany, because of the emotional state of those watching. In other words, you are going to have to do better than words..."

    'These...things were just barely what one might call a 'dog'. Boxy, with the matching limbs, but that strange weapon it used, seemed to be both scanner and destructor. I would do well to avoid being caught by the creature's eye, and focus on disabling these things as soon as possible. After all...in hunting, dogs are not used to claim prey, but rather to flush out the prey to be shot. It was likely, this too was to be the case...if we wanted to achieve victory, we would need to not fall into her trap, but to have her fall int ours.'

    Raziel, deciding to stay back, reaches out with one of his clawed hands, as the reaver comes to life in the other one. His mind focuses, before attempting to grab one of the robotic dogs with his telekinetic abilities...and attempt to launch them for the nearest spike or dangerous level hazard avalible. Failing that, another dog.

    Right now, Raziel decides to restraing himself...there had to be another shoe.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon glances to Dr. Kleiner. "Hmm. Oh, well... You really ought to go protect her, Gordon!" Kleiner says, nodding firmly. "I am sure I will have plenty of safety near our partner!" With that, Gordon takes off towards where Tony flew. He intends to hit the enemy flank like a truck full of bricks. Kleiner takes his place. "Now, miss... 'Hunter', I'm sure I can't speak much for our good friends, the Anti-Rain squad. But I can say this with a terrible certainty. We wouldn't ever be tricked into anything of this sort. We simply see friends, sisters in arms, separated by cruelty. How could we not act!"

    He checks to one side. "/Is/ there a reason to not act?"

    Gordon is spinning up. "Defensive weapon selection system activated. Munition level monitoring activated." His suit synths gently. He brings up his shotgun, keeping his crowbar attached at the hardpoint of his wrist. He has often fucked around with these foes out in urban environments when they targeted him, where he could sort of afford to. This time, he can't afford to, because none of those things apply. He has to chase them down, hard and fast, and brutalize them harder and faster.

    "Now, I still don't know /why/ you're doing all this." Kleiner says, in a nervous tone. "But-- but, well, rest quite assured, Miss Hunter, we have the utmost confidence. We intend to reunite the Anti-Rain squad with each other. It isn't just for the good of this world, it's for the good of any rational feeling about those sisters-in-arms." He speaks with a muted sense of the humanitarian zeal that Gordon obsessively acts with. This is, after all, his teacher.

    Gordon intends to chase down the evasive dogbeasts. He intends to do what seems like the sensible thing for something that isn't targeting him, per se, at least not yet: He intends to CRASH into them, blasting with shotgun blast after shotgun blast until he can shoulder-check them out of their run, pin them to the ground with a crowbar, and unload the military-grade piercing buckshot point-blank around anywhere but whatever seems to be the main control reception antenna. THAT, he hopes to rip out with a wrench of his crowbar, to trace and triangulate with, if the trace hasn't entirely finished.

    "So, Miss Hunter! I won't tell you we'll win because we're right. But I will say you won't bargain with us, and I will say..." What will Kleiner say? He lost a bit of the track of his train of thought. "Why, I would invite you to try more than claiming we've been manipulated if you want to make any sort of case!" He finally decides. "Because the one thing humans can't stand is to see a pack broken, or a tribe scattered, or a squad fractured. I would never ask Clover to say goodbye now that she's finally found a home."
Tony Stark Setting up the communication is easy. He has all the pieces, all the scraps of data. And, the most important piece: He's Tony Stark. With a masked data pipeline from the Griffin, Tony has all the tactical data he could ever want - which is good.

It helps him pick up the mass of laser puppies crossed with quadrepedal military death machines heating up the air with directed energy attacks.

"Rose, we gotta go!" He urges, bringing his suit's forearm, four brilliant cyan pylons emerging from the sides of the arm and projecting a solid barrier of repulsor energy, chunks immediately being struck by the almost-tangible bursts of slagging energy.

Across both shoulders of his suit, eight missile ports open and fire their payloads into the air, arcing up for a half-heartbeat before zipping down, aiming for maximum saturation with their high explosive payloads. "Don't mind the property damage and don't go easy on them - Nova, where's that space carrier of yours? Chase this mass of nasties back to their source and give us all a vector. Gideon, get Doctor Kleiner to safety!"

Using his armor's shielding in such a focused manner means it's much more effective than simple dispersal - but it also limited his movement a great deal, and he intended to hold off the doggos until Rose had sprung into action.
Gideon Kaspar     It turns out that there's a reason to design a robot like that, and it has to do with truly obnoxious agility. When the supply depot comes down, the swarms of quadrupeds flow around it like water, leaping and zigzagging between columns of turret fire. They predict incoming shells before they land, scattering out of the way and leaving Haguro only cratering the ground. When Raziel grabs one with his mind, it crashes into a fellow quadruped unit in a way that sends both tumbling over the ground, yet leaping to their feet right away, basically undamaged by their lightweight and simplified chassis' colliding.

    When Tomoe and Haguro jump into the fray, they find that this appears to be the exception. Tomoe can barely clip the things that suddenly circle around her like a pack of wolves, the ones in front of her leaping back from the swings of her blade, while the ones behind her jump in the moment her defense is lowered. Without reliance on wheels or thrusters to navigate, and without the human form programmed to use handheld weapons, close range is no real impediment to them. In fact, up close, their laser blasts are even more intense, suddenly hitting with deadly spikes of heat that doesn't even feel like heat; almost like one is being bitten. They even *charge down* Raziel, despite being visibly armed with a sword.

    "We're not running though! These ones are just asking for it! Even if they are cute, I'm going to rip their guts out! Hahahaha!" replies Rose to Tony, only unslinging her rifle and propping it over the top of his repulsor screen, immediately hosing the incoming pack formation on fully automatic, firing underslung grenades into the barrage. "That's it! Come closer! I'll feed you all the bullets you want!"

    "Clover, you already know what I'm going to say." "I'm on it, Commander." the T-Doll says, apparently glad to get away from the screen, and runs to join the battle, networking with Rose on the way. The trace is only partially complete, but given that Hunter must be remoting the proxy robots from somewhere, if she expects to be able to ascertain if they've found A-15 or not, it's a simple matter to finish it with their connections included.

    "Pathetic, but expected. You've chosen poorly, to get involved with those Dolls, but then that's why humans made them to look like themselves, and programmed them to please them."

    Saturation fire from the missile launchers does a more adequate job of blasting the front wave to pieces, obviously being fairly fragile given their size and articulation and light frame. Wide angle shotgun blasts have a similar success rate coming from the blind side, albeit Gordon ends up surrounded and entangled too once he tackles to ground and starts ripping expensive PMC hardware to pieces with a crowbar.
Haguro      With the dog-bots proving to be faster than expected, Haguro quickly learns that trying to fight these things like their more humanoid counterparts is not going to work nearly as well. Learning from that mistake (relatively) quickly, she prepares herself for the worst as they start to turn their lasers towards herself and the other Elites more directly.

     "Tch... They're fast. If I can predict their moves, though, then...!" Haguro winces as yet more laser fire grazes against her, leaving black marks on her unnaturally white skin and armor alike. She darts about in her efforts to both avoid taking them head on while also trying to get closer to the creatures, trying to move to where she expects they'll be instead of simply chasing them. Instead of going for more grabs, however, she focuses entirely on shooting at the dogs with wide blasts of flak that would normally be reserved for anti-air combat.

     Nobody said that all that metal garbage could only be fired at planes.
Raziel     The laser, focused on Raziel was harder to evade than he expected. Attempting the swat the shot out of the air, it splits, striking him in multiple places across his undead flesh, staggering the ghoul back and causing him to drop to a knee. For a moment, he looked as if he might need a moment to get up, before his eyes glow fiercely, and he stands up. The Reaver comes to life, it's blade taking a darker tint to it as he charges into the field of battle.

    "And yet you claim to know the mind of a human? Miss, you understand the human mind as well as I do these days, and I was even one once. I doubt humans even understand their own minds, you might know groups, you can probably even guess at what people MIGHT do in a situation...but in the end, a strategy never hits the field of battle intact."

    The Soul reaver comes down at one of the dogs, aiming to drain energy, and life energy from around the area, though it might be little, there was enough to focus the blade...but he would need to be quick or it would turn itself on him.

    Then without mercy, the reaver comes up, aiming to smash into the ground in a wide area burst attack, aiming to cover as many of the dogs as he can, while meanwhile trying to drawn their lifeforce mercillessly into him.
Tomoe Tomoe is fast she's adapting rather quickly here, the small dog-like robots are fighting almost like Tyranid Gaunts when she thinks about it. With this in mind she changes tacting moving with such unpredictability that she'll end up evading or deflecting all the attacks that come her way at least they are on her, which is what she was hoping for, and that's when she's going to take flight for a moment, not long just enough to get a bit of distance.

She'll land, Tomoe will start to chant once more. Golden runes dance about her body, as she makes ready with the spell given there is a horde? She's going to change tactics and unleashes a barrage of light rays of her own on the enemy horde. Light rays twist and bend in ways they should not as they seek out the small dog like drones, at least it will give them something to worry about, right?
Nova Terra     "You heard the man, get down here!" Not exactly a professional order. But Reigel proceeds to follow it anyway. He's used to it by now.

    Leaving the computer to continue analysing the trace, Reigel moves out into the center of the Griffin's bridge, ordering, "Initiate descent, target grid one twenty seven. Bring weapons and defenses online. Switch to flight mode." The starship's engines light up as it begins to move closer towards the planet. Its large wings fold out from their travel position, spreading to the ship's sides in preparation of atmospheric flight. From inside the bridge, the flames of re-entry can begin to be seen sweeping across the plasteel windows.

    Nova is forced to dive off the top of the supply depot as a barrage of lasers is sent her way. She takes one of them to the side, wincing in pain as her suit is badly singed and the energy makes it through to her skin beneath.

    Pressing herself up against the armored frame of the depot, Nova glances down at her side, before asking, "How's it going?"

    The SCV pilot replies, "First one is up!" Where barely a minute or two ago there was a pre-fab slab, a full blown turret about as tall as a person now comes to life. Automated targeting sensors activate and the turret begins to unload ludicrous amounts of bullets from its twin guns. Perhaps not the best defensive measure against the tricky robot dogs... But Nova has an idea for that.

    Retrieving one of the small cylinders attached at her thigh, Nova activates it and throws it over the supply depot and into the mass of machines. The hi-tec flashbang quickly goes off in a blast of light and energy, threatening to disorient and delay the senses and movements of any robot dogs that get caught. Thus giving the turret a chance to blow them apart.
Gordon Freeman     Incoming on the side. Roll. Gordon darts to one side of a dead dog. It's a shield. There's too many surrounding. Gordon's helmet comes up right when an assault comes for it. It's redundant, Gordon shotgun-blasts the dog before the attack lands. He's on his feet, leaving damage in his wake. Charge another. This time he's blasting wider assaults with a rapid-fire SMG, ducking under any response and slinging grenades around. Blast left, blast right. Charge ahead, tear it apart with a crowbar. If he's right, he should be able to make it hard enough to confirm this that Hunter will keep sustaining the assault long enough to trace, or she'll hunt them down in-person with her superior invisibility.

    "It is never a poor choice to work together." Dr. Kleiner says, with a much less uncertain tone. "It is never a poor choice to help those in need, and to help people who want to unite. Artificial or not, that strength is what carried humanity from its humble beginnings into the future." He's got a surprising degree of conviction here, for someone who's chronically a bit of an absent-minded doof. "Now, Miss Hunter, I'm sure you could make a case that you can beat that strength, but I won't compromise on the truth that it's strength and not weakness."

    A savvy person might do this just to keep Hunter on the line. Kleiner isn't a savvy person, he's just a really idealistic dude and he's hopefully still saying the things that keep her on the phone anyway. Presumablty these are the sorts of things going through Gordon's head when he's so busy not ever goddamn talking!
Tony Stark Tony waits, and waits for Rose to back off so he can get a better angle.
Rose humps his repulsor screen and starts tearing into the laser-spewing robot dogs with abandon.

"I feel like there's some miscommunication going on here!" Stark complains as his eyes anxiously watch his suit's main power readout drops well into the yellow.
"Shield power critical - the whole system's going to come down!"
"Right, I'm over it. Flush left gauntlet fire suppression."

As the shield comes down in a thick puff of white smoke from the four pylons extended from the left gauntlet and the blasts of energetic waves from the dogs start 'striking' his armor with large heat flares, visibly blooming molten spots on his armor, Iron Man levels his right fist at street level.

"Rose, break to cover!"

A small port on the mid-forearm of his suit pops up, before the brilliant cardinal cutting beam of his sweep-and-burn laser scythes through the middle of the dogs -- and the building next to them.

Stark can't spend TOO much time doing much more than 'missing Gordon on the ground' in his own immediately-following flight burn to another building so he doesn't get melted to death.
Gideon Kaspar     Gordon is equally untouchable in the chaotic mess of creepy hypertech industrial killbots being commanded by a distant overseer only present on a holoscreen, i.e. his element. The quadrupeds can't get a lock on him, aborting their shots so as not to hit fellow live units more often than not, only receiving buckshot blasts and submachine gun sprays to their forward faces for the trouble. Haguro opens up with flak set for a point blank fuse and finds that the flat out wall of shrapnel and incendiary blows away entire five-packs at a time.

    Chasing them down with a sword is still obnoxiously difficult, as Tomoe will find, where they leap in and out of the length of her blade, making even less progress than she is in blasting her shield; at least she can hack off a limb here and there. Maybe they expect its integrity to fail and the item to melt, instead of working off videogame durability. Raziel's sword works just fine though --better than fine-- albeit not in the capacity of a bladed weapon. As the wave of necrotic pull sweeps out in all directions, the quadrupedal drones falter, slow, and those closest begin to collapse, their glowing eyes winking out, as if some gigantic rolling weight were slowly and inexorably moving forward and crushing the life out of every robot that can't stay ahead of it.

    In prime position to be hit with the flash bang from the front they're pushed toward, the chaingun turret rips into their numbers from a dead angle. Rose yells "Hey you're not the Commander!" but is suddenly grabbed by the back of her shirt and yanked out of there by Clover anyways, trying to be responsible team mom. When Tony fires the laser system back into the crowd, it's all but over in an instant, scything down huge swathes of same-size same-elevation runners as they rush at him en mass, the sizzling waves of invisibly laser distorted air biting at him and his cover suddenly torn aside as so many drones become twice as many half drones with big glowing orange lines down the middle.

    Oddly, it's then that the remainder of attack drones, those furthest away from the skirmish, suddenly turn and run off. It's extremely strange that Sangvis Ferri's most expendable, mass produced attack force would actually retreat from a battlefield. It's only just as the trace completes, where Hunter cannot help herself but linger to say "Maybe you should be a little less selective about who counts, then. You'll need all the strength you can get." before cutting out.
Nova Terra     The weapons fire lightens and soon enough the Perdition turret goes silent. Nova leans out from behind her cover to have a look, seeing the robot army retreating into the distance. Nova slowly walks out into the open, checking around to make sure that there aren't any stragglers. She shrugs a little, looking somewhat surprised, "That was unexpected."

    Nova's wrist beeps, causing her to look down. She then raises a hand to the side of her visor, "Looks like we don't need you after all, Reigel."

    "Yes, I suspected as much from the sensor readings. The Sangvis Ferri force does appear to be retreating. But I thought you should know, the trace has just been completed."

    Nova looks at little thoughtful at that, "Interesting timing..." Nova looks in the direction of the retreating SF.

    There'll be time to examine the results though, so Nova looks around the battlefield, asking of the others, "Hey! You guys all okay?"
Tomoe It's one hell of an onslaught but tomoe endures it. Tomoe is, however, having a time with swarmers like this but she's not alone dear god she's not thinking about fighting alone like this finally they start to falter and get cut down from. She'll have to rethink her magic use against these things, maybe a different element the next time but she's alive and finally the drones are brought down but oddly the remaining ones start to fall back and they get a disturbing comment from Hunter over the comms as they do so, She'll take a moment to sheath her blade.

She'll look over to Nova.

"I'll live don't worry about me."
Raziel     Raziel squints as the dogs retreat, from what he heard, these things were expendable. There is a slow draw in of breath, as he considers this. There is much he does not know...but.

    'Odd, that these dogs would retreat now. Especially as their worth, as I was told, was inherantly low and easily replacable. The thought that a soldier on the field could be given so little value was alien to me, but with beings who no soul it makes more sense. Still...it did not sit right with me, but more than reasons of personal honor, but what meaning this may have on future missions. No, I fear some bigger game is at play here, but what her plan was...I could only guess.'

    As energy rushes back into Raziel, his body would start reconstructing itself. However, the blade is dismissed after a moment, the weapon could do the rest in a state where it wouldn't threaten to be a danger to himself.
Gordon Freeman     Gordon keeps up the SMG fire as the military machines flee, but soon he's out and needs to reload, and the beasties are gone. The trace is done though, or so says the subtle ping from his HEV suit. He clicks the button at the side of his helmet, letting it fold back up into the bulk of the back of his suit. He narrows his eyes, and bites a lip, nervously working it around his teeth like a nut he might crack the shell of, before he gets back.

    He makes doubly sure that Rose and Clover are okay. First Rose, closer since she was at the attack site, then Clover, who moved there as well. He doesn't say anything to them, he just strides up, checks to make sure they don't show signs of obvious injury, and moves on fast. He trusts Kleiner's okay too, but he's not exactly delaying in checking in with him too. Kleiner doesn't seem wounded besides his pride; he feels like he's lost the argument in some way, even though they won the position.

    "Well, it certainly seems like we got what we came here for, even if... Well! I think it's time we recover and plan. Why, we might just have a chance to recover the Anti-Rain Squad's sister in arms quite soon." Gordon gives him a skeptical look. "Ah... I believe the trace was relay-proof, if you have worries about a trap. It would hardly make sense otherwise. Hmmm, though someone with such fascinating optical cameoflage is always a sort of an ambush. I do wonder how she so cleverly hides emissions so thoroughly..."
Tony Stark Clover appearing to bail out Rose eases Tony's mind as he finishes his cardinal sweep, the field cleared of enemies, if not bodies. Nova calls out the all clear and starts the 'everyone ok?' calls. It's familiar.

Steve got him doing them a while ago, but being intercepted on them by the Ghost is a welcome surprise. "Raziel thinks they may be leading us back to a trap, but I'm a little inclined to spring that trap: we won't catch her if she goes to ground, so I guess we're in for the hail mary."

"Nova, I think you'll be instrumental in the next leg of this... This 'Hunter' can't have eyes everywhere among us... So on our next approach, we'll make it hard."
Nova Terra     The others seem to still be alive. That's good. Mission casualties tend to look bad on reflection. Nova looks over at the SCV, "How about you?"

    The SCV pilot groans in annoyance, "The thrusters are going to need replacing." Nova frowns with some annoyance. If it were a normal SCV, that wouldn't be a problem. But these covert ops types are top of the line...

    But that's a matter for another day. As Tony clues her in, Nova nods along, "I agree, this does have the suspicious taste of a trap. And I agree that we should spring it. We don't have a lot of choice other than to do so and hope we are prepared enough to survive it." She then grins, "And I agree that I can be instrumental for the next part!" She doesn't know the details yet, but that part is pretty much assured!

    "For now though, time to salvage what we can." She raises her hand to her visor, "Hey Reigel, see if you can find a parking spot nearby." Nova looks up as she hears the Griffin's familiar sounding engines, watching the ship coming into view in the sky above.