Scene #6346: #03: Silence

Owner	Pose
Gideon Kaspar	The chase for SP721 Hunter after the completed trace isn't long. Despite the Sangvis Ringleader's absurd mobility, she can only move as fast as the forces she has with her to surround and capture A-15, and the Griffin T-Doll herself knows full well that a force will be coming to get her, and so has deliberately stalled rather than staying on the run. It leads them well off the grid, to tracts of undeveloped land between the devastated formerly populated area and the next city, out in a deep forest, with heavy woods broken up by patches of wide open ground, all downhill towards a bend in the river that has connected the last two urban areas. "You've made up your mind? You're really going to walk into this?" "She's our companion. She would do the same for me." "She definitely would, but you're not her. You're the leader of the AR team. She went out of her way to keep you out of harm's way you know." "Well then as the leader, I have the authority to dismiss her concerns." "That sounds like you." pon arriving, the woodland area is initially dead silent --so much that there's seemingly no way it could be possible that any contingent capable of actually capturing someone who amounts to an expert secret operations agent could be lurking around here. Double and triple checking, there's no doubt that it's the right place, but scouting through the trees, there's nothing to be seen or heard. That makes it that much more unusual when Hunter gives herself away long before she's in any position to ambush them. When the whine, crack, and buzz of beam fire starts, it's not coming straight at them, but still in the middle distance, staggered in disarray and quickly setting fire to portions of the wooded areas that send smoke up into the air. It's as if multiple units of soldiers had suddenly gotten spooked and panicked, or started shooting at each other mistakenly in the dark, but these are robots under singular control.
Gordon Freeman	Gordon is as silent as the forest. But when the blast happens, he stops, holds completely still, and cocks his head. His armor activates. The HEV suit synths alerts about how it's activating, but the man himself is confused, still... Until he glances to one side at the T-Dolls. If there's shooting, then A-15 is likely at risk, and Gordon knows. He breaks into a mad sprint. Augmented motion surges in his body as he accelerates, bringing out a heavy shotgun, surging around or sometimes through the flames to get right into the thick of things without a moment of delay. Any opportunity they have to avoid getting ambushed by the attacker is one they need to capitalize on before she gets a chance to restore her stealth!! The chance that this is actually an ambush tactic itself is either too many yomi levels high for Gordon to recognize, or the man himself doesn't care or have the ability to mitigate the risk. Whichever it is, Gordon sure isn't saying.
Raziel	'The Hunt for the Tactical Doll had come in earnest. This felt like we were being lead into a trap...it was obvious she was careful, cunning, and avoided direct confrontation unless she could be assured victory. However, we would not be caught by surprise so easily. While most others considered us to have the advantage, others among us were lead we were being lead into a trap. Those ones with the means, were working towards a way where we would not have to struggle from the litteral dirt to accomplish the goals of recovering this Tactical Doll. Still...already before we begin, there are those already willing to throw themselves into their trap.' Raziel's head turns to the fire, eyes narrowing. No, that would be too easy, drawing us somewhere in the expectation she missfired. It would be a good trap, a bait for it, rather. Announcing this, already someone was already flying into the mouth of danger. Raziel, however, decided to do what a Wraith can do best... Abandoning his flesh, he became incomporial, and shifted to the spirit world. Here, he took to hiding, waiting...looking for a means where the trap could be sprung. 'While I disagreed with their choices, I still could not bring myself to abandon my allies.' a deep sigh, 'However, I would not simply play into the hand either. I would wait for the trap to be sprung, before springing my own...and elected to stay out of sight and in the realm of ghosts.'
Nova Terra	The sound of rocket engines break up the monotony of vacant nature. A rather loud departure. And judging by the increasing volume, it's heading in the direction of this empty land. The Vulture bike rockets off the edge of a ridge, streaking through the air before coming back down towards the ground again. Its hover engines stir up a swirl of dirt and leaves as it reaches the woodland floor again. The vehicle then turns, hover sliding to a stop. Its rider stands up on the large bike, glancing around at the tranqil trees. Nova frowns, muttering to herself, "This is the right place..." The Ghost brings her arm up, tapping at the display on it and confirming her location versus that of the trace. Yup. Should be around here, somewhere... Nova's head quickly turns as the sounds of energy gunfire echo through the woods. She quickly lowers her visor over her eyes and examines that general direction. Raised heat levels, rising smoke. You know what they say: Where there's smoke and fire, there's Sangis Ferri units. It's true that it could be a distraction, or a trap. Nova's not so sure though. Doesn't exactly seem like normal SF tactics from what Nova's seen so far. "Going to check it out." Nova crouches back on her Vulture bike, rear rockets flaring up again as she blasts off in the direction of the weapons fire. If it is a trap, they don't have a lot of time to skirt around it. What with A-15 in danger. And if it is a distraction... Well, the speed helps!
Tomoe	The Hunter still had to be engaged, this was going to be a nasty fight as she moves into the trap along with everyone else she knows they have to trip it right? So she'll be attempting to take point and be the first one to take the brunt of whatever the enemy commander has in mind. Things are quiet but they seem to be at the right place. She checks several times and then finally there's the crack of beam fire. That is the only warning that Tomoe gets and it seems something has happened but it's not at them? It seems A-15 or someone else has got their attention before they did. WIth that she'll drop her tank buffs as she makes ready for the fight and will attempt to keep in a good spot where she can rush to aid her comrades in this pending fight. Again she's brought a sword to a gunfight, it's going to be painful for her and she's accepted that. Somedays she did miss Eisen's shotgun loadout, and this is one of those times, and with that in mind she's moving nwith the group as they head to join the fight.
Tony Stark	The preparations were easy. Tony Stark was always prepared. He lived in a constant state of low-to-mid level neurotic preparation and innovation. When he actually took to the field, and was not ensconsed in layers of bureaucratic, professional, and personal security, Stark was past the planning stage, and into the action stage. "Keep it tight, people we're dealing with a hunting expert - this could be a trap or a diversion, so don't go..." People immediately start going. "Right, okay. That's fine. Clover, Rose, you take the centerline. Raziel, look after the girls, would you? Intercept anything too spicy before it gets to them. Nova and Gordon will be our vanguards, and I'll play interceptor. Sound good? Let's bring everyone back home: This isn't a heroic intervention, this is a rescue mission. Let's treat it like one." Inside his helmet, Tony maneuvers the flying Mark 43 suit whippingly through the treelines, at the high center of the party's advance into the almost certainly trapped forest. "Friday, can you make heads or tails of the situation? It's way too quiet." "Working on it, boss."
Gideon Kaspar	There's not much to be said for it when the consensus is to rush in. Even if it weren't, there's a strong chance Clover might judging by the look that flashes across her face when she hears the gunfire. It turns to one of confusion, and then narrows in suspicion while raising her holosight to her eye, when she clues into what Rose says aloud: "I don't hear Violet's gun at all. It's all Sangvis, right? Weeeird." Tony takes to the air and starts scanning through the trees. Friday immediately detects a great quantity of digital noise messing with the airwaves, and tracks down several large blobs of organized contacts --rippers and prowlers-- in states of chaos. When the others arrive, they find the Sangvis Ferri T-Dolls and drones wildly shooting at shadows, at the terrain, and even at each other, going absolutely berserk and menacing everything around them rather than anything in particular. Several of them have already been shot by their peers. Even when Gordon charges right into the fray, none of them suddenly stop, go 'haha surprise' and shoot him instead. They're almost oblivious, save that their random targeting fires a few shots his way, as well as Nova and Tomoe. The radio crackles with an open comms broadband transmission, staticky and garbled slightly with the amount of noise going on. "You stole a Sangvis Ferri authorization code all the way back then. Why didn't you use it when your squad was on the brink of extermination." "You're not smart enough to figure it out." "You planned on getting caught right at the end, I realize that much. You have too much confidence in yourself . . . no, too much confidence in the others." "Let's just say that I have even less faith in Sangvis Ferri's second rate AI." "Coming from a tool of Griffin. You think you're that special just because of Persica? Maybe you are a little, but ultimately only one of you isn't expendable, and you know that it's not you." "You still can't have her" It's during this period of chaos that the sound of ballistic gunfire finally starts, and also where Hunter seems to reassert some control over the situation. Given the battalion of dolls and drones she'd brought are now more of a hazard than anything else, it seems her strike force has been redirected to exterminate her own misbehaving units. A swarm of the loping Big Dog-esque DARPA bots comes running out of the trees, quickly surrounding the berserk detachment and neatly entrapping it, whittling it away from the edges while a followup force guns the malfunctioning Dolls down from range. At first it appears like a team of Jaegers, given the obviously high power firearms and extremely long range, but instead of camo cloaks in the woods, T-Dolls in identical, sleek grey and purple tactical armour move into the clearing. Their faces are concealed with fully armoured visors, vital components properly fortified in something resembling battle dress, and they have full-featured battle rifles of of Sangvis Ferri exotic particle design, looking like real, high end, main line vanguard troops; elite mooks in the space between cannon fodder and specialist minibosses. They clue into the obvious targets right away, taking knee or taking cover and firing with deadly accuracy into the visible Elites, precise in taking their shots and fearless in holding their positions. "They're already here. I see. So that was your intention." "You underestimate the abilities of humans, because of your blind hate.
Raziel	Raziel does not even understand what is going on anymore. The robots, which are all under the control of the hunter...are now shooting each other. While he was able to give into the idea of this being a trap, just shooting each other leaves him to believe this can't be that simply anymore. With the arrvial of the three to the battlefield the game has changed. Once more, pushing himself into the Material realm, he stops near a pair of trees to watch. Hm... He reaches out, focusing his power on one of the varous dolls, aiming to try and use his telekinesis to hold her still, and He aims to use this support to hold members of the enemy down as they are (hopefully) targeted first. The faster they could reduce their numbers, the faster they could complete the objective, and give time for whoever is making the drones shoot themselves to keep doing that. This is a great idea, and thankful for their numbers being reduced. Of course, this means Raziel is solid again, but he's gotten a directive. Cover the girls, and support his allies as he can.
Nova Terra	Nova has seen berserk robots before, so has a fair idea of what she's seeing as she rockets over a hill into sight of the SF units. She doesn't initially engage, willing to let the crazed bots wipe themselves out as the staticy conversation plays in her ear. Oh great, the doggos again. However, the dog-like robots turn out to not be the true threat here as rather accurate particle shots begin to slam into Nova's bike, burning into armour and starting to rip apart the machinery beneath. The Ghost swears as she looks towards the source, her visor highlighting a number of the advanced models. Nova leans to the left and right, trying to avoid the ranged fire, but it's only mildly effective as evidenced by another shot impacting one of the Vulture's engines, causing it to burst into flames. Well, more so than the rocket normally flames. "Screw it." Nova turns her Vulture straight on to the elite units, pressing herself as low as she can to keep out of the fire. More and more blasts of energy rip into the machine as Nova quickly closes the distance, tapping a few commands into the bike's controls. She then detaches her rifle from the vehicle and jumps off it and into the air. The flaming bike rockets towards the Sangvis Ferri elites before the payload of grenades for the onboard launcher all explode at once. Nova twists through the air, snapping off a few shots at some of the other SF units before landing on her feet and dashing behind a large tree. Pressing against the wood, she glances out from the cover to take stock of the situation, while asking over the radio, "Don't suppose you can get a bearing on those transmissions?" She fires off a burst of fire to try and keep the T-Dolls pinned.
Tomoe	Tomoe has a few shots coming her way she's able to handle most of them. She deflects one blast away with her shield. Another does clip her much to her dismay, it hurts and she changes tactics now. Wings flare her wings out and she takes flight the moment they have finished forming. She needs to get off the ground and get a better view of the combat zone before her. She'll chant a spell as she rises, runes dace about her and she'll rain down bolts of light upon the hostile Sangvis Ferri units before her she's not holding back either she's trying to clear them out while they are dealing with more than her or even just her party, hopefully this will work to clear them out and they can keep after their VIP rescue and the target they are here to take out of they can.
Gordon Freeman	Gordon suffers the impact of some of those berserk shots. He takes it and tanks it, pushing on. If they're not firing directly at him, they're not a foe, they're an area hazard. And for a test subject of his caliber, there's no area hazard too tough to justify stopping when someone's at risk. He hears the sound of ballistic gunfire. That has to be it. These are always particle weapons. Maybe that's the sound of their VIP target? Well, he has other matters to deal with. When longer-range fighters start coming at him, he quickly swaps from shotgun to a heavy crossbow, ready to fire superheated tungsten rods. Impacts slam into his body and stagger him without breaking his momentum, forming constellations of bruises over his flesh under the high-impact reactive armor but refusing to let them break skin or break bone. He heard ballistics, and he's going to go for them and protect the source. For now? He works with a very different tactic. For a long time, he's been focused on killing the T-Dolls. But now, it seems, he's had a realization: They only carry one weapon each, and they're specialized for ranged combat. It's /incredibly hard/ to kill one of them at range with even a fairly heavy weapon. But particle weapons? Dr. Freeman knows particle weapons, he's practically an expert in the things. He also knows their points of failure, where to target and strike. So now, instead of going for center mass, he's blasting away with tremendous tungsten rods to pierce and impale the guns... And their holders, when he can, while he keeps making his break for his chosen source of sound. Hopefully this'll mean getting out of the cover. A forest is better than an open road, but it's still not nearly as comfortable as a proper interior space.
Tony Stark	As the party rapidly makes contact with the disrupted, berserk Sangvis forces, and since they ignore the rising aerial form of Iron Man, he goes near-completely unscathed by the confused and erratic fire from the ground forces. Almost too good to be true, Stark takes his time while Friday scans out the source of the conversation - the missing T-Doll, and Hunter. As the elite forces break through the treeline to start engaging the ground team - and the DARPA dogs start giving literally everyone a heckin' problem, Stark laconically aims a palm at the group of elite plasma-gun toting strike units. "I'm going to bet those aren't our targets." "I'm reading the signal bearing northeast, through the trees - so, no." A scattering of precision shots splash against the flying red exosuit, breaking against shield and scorching armored plate with a visible air-recoil. "Right, I'm making a beeline for it. Nova, Gordon, girls, I'm pushing our target to you four! Don't get quagmired by the berserk units, or run over by the dogs - skirt the fight, hit the marksman that just broke through the treeline, and let's get to AR-15 before Hunter pins her down." Putting his (extremely large gobs of) money where his mouth is, the Mark 43 twirls once in the air, laying down a few second-long amber beams of repulsor energy into the front rank of the just-revealed elites, chasing those with a scattering of micromissiles to hem in the formation and make it easier for them to be picked off by Tony's allies - Or simply rolling them over in a full out charge, especially with the team's high density of Big Hefty Munitions and the will to use them.
Gideon Kaspar	Fire is focused on Nova's bike as she approaches, quickly tearing it to shreds under the 'high calibre' battle rifles, to the point it doesn't go so far as to actually crash into them before blowing up. The cluster of grenades lands in the firing line and explodes right on target, but a second later, the affected T-Dolls roll over and pick themselves back up, battle armour burnt and broken off in places, some with visors snapped in half, exposing blank expressions and empty, silvery eyes, but mere moments later they go right back to it. Far tougher than the Ripper units, these ones split up and start circling around Nova's point of cover, crossing angles of fire to immediately decimate her tree cover and start placing rifle shots through the trunks. Heat vision, at minimum. They can spot her through the trees, and have the firepower to penetrate the natural cover around. When some of them start to seize up in Raziel's grip, the others immediately identify the source of the attack, and a second squad pivots and crouches to light him up, identifying him straight away in the underbrush and blasting him like a squad of trained SEALS. Hunter is wise to this game already. The group has been surveilled before. "Whoa! Aren't these the new Vespid units? I thought Sangvis wasn't supposed to be selling those until next year!" "R-rose, this is a battlefield, not a showroom." "Right! That means I can wreck as many of them as I want! Ahahahaha! I'll pull them to pieces and get a good look at those shiny components for real! I'll start with the eyes!" The two members of the Anti-Rain team take cover and begin exchanging fire, activating thermal dampening so as not to be caught immediately, and putting several magazines of ammunition into the Vespid units. Between them and Tomoe raining spells from above, they're still remarkably stubborn. They use the wrecks of the previous T-Dolls as cover and makeshift shields, even propping them up to fire from behind, so that incoming attacks are soaked by so much mechanical cadaver. The dog-like 'Dinergates' charge the line straight away, bobbing and weaving through fire, even as several of them go down flaming and sparking from especially accurate hits, and leap the foliage barrier to try and knock down Nova and shake-drag her like wolves with cutting lasers. Though the front line battle armour is extremely sturdy, they're optimized for bullets and energy weapons, and the archaic nonsense of a crossbow, especially one firing tungsten rods, is surprisingly effective, even at impaling the cover the vespids use. Their rifles especially aren't armour to soak up enemy fire, for obvious reasons, and a great many end up trashed with a red hot rebar rod through their accelerator chambers. Guided by a resourceful ringleader in direct control, those T-Dolls then start grabbing the carbines of their fallen Ripper comrades, but that necessitates moving out into the open, where Rose and Clover immediately blast them full of aimbot accurate anti-android ammunition, focusing on one at a time.
Gideon Kaspar	They manage to open up a hole in the line, temporarily, where fill-in units are held in abeyance by Tony's repulsor beams, moving to avoid them rather than trading shots, with little to gain by doing the latter. Micromissiles catch and finish off the grenade-damaged units, trashing the gynoid frames under the armour, and blowing open composite reactive plates on others, purging much of their battle dress as they run. This opens a route for Gordon to run through, but the dinergates are quickly on his tail, chasing him down at higher speed than he can run, and slicing their way through the underbrush that can get in their way. No shots come after Tony, apparently judged a lost cause at this point and delegated to the reserve line, which does involve flying through a screen of beams aimed exclusively at him for a few hundred meters until he exceeds their range. They rush into a halfway cleared space by the river, full of rocks, collapsed trees, heavy thickets, and wide spaces of open ground, as well as the rusted remains of ancient military vehicles entangled in ivy from some old, mysterious tank battle that played out here decades ago. There's a firefight already in progress, judging by the number of destroyed Rippers and Dinergates already here, left down to the final two combatants; a Tactical Doll in purple with the G&K insignia on her armband and a heavily modified assault rifle, and a pale Tactical Doll in black and grey with short white hair and two futuristic handguns the size of sawed-offs, charging in twin mechanical holsters. From the air, Tony can see long periods of maneuvering going by, followed by frenzied running gun battles that last only a few seconds at a time, both trying to outmaneuver the other, but A-15 at a clear disadvantage due to Hunter's nutso speed. Not playing with stealth or ambush, the Sangvis ringleader doll is a beast over open ground, steadily pulverizing each piece of cover with ludicrously rapid dual-gun bursts. Though she has to stop to charge every so often, A-15 is clearly just holding her off, trying to conserve ammo and make the cover and concealment last so she isn't outmaneuvered.
Raziel	Raziel narrows his eyes as the shots start coming. That was quick addapting, because he hadn't used his telekinesis a whole lot...for them to ID him almost immediately was...interesting. Forced to give up his telekinetic assault, he's quickly put on the defense. Leaping back and forth to try and keep himself moving, not relying on the cover that was quickly becoming decimated. A single shot hitting the man square in the chest and kncking him flat on the ground. There is a moment where he does not move... And then flips back to his feet with a nice hole in the...skeletal form that he looks at with some annoyance. Raziel would rather avoid getting shot like that again, forcing himself to unleash the Reaver into his hands, as he starts smacking bullets away with the blade as they wiz at him. Though the cover fire from Anti-Rain team is nice for a change, instead of being exploded accidently. Charging with them, Raziel takes careful attention to any shots made at them, moving into a defensive position around the group trying to block shots as he is able. That is until they come into the battle between their target and A-15. Getting into melee fight in that kindof fight was likely ill advised...he can not fly, only glide...another reminder of what he had lost thanks to that degenerate Kain...but... The nearby abandoned vehilcle was still there. Reaching out towards it with both hands, he moves to pick it up with the telekinesis...and then launch it at the Hunter. Maybe it will only act as a distraction... Or she'll get hit by a flying car. Either way, it's better than just watching.
Nova Terra	Nova didn't expect a tree to last very longer under particle fire. But she hoped it would have lasted a little longer than it actually did! A shot rips through the entire tree, just barely missing Nova's head. Bits of wood blast outwards at high speed, a rather sharp piece managing to pierce Nova's suit and Nova herself. Even wood can be dangerous with enough force. Nova grunts in pain, before leaving her cover in a fast dash. Nova moves through the forest quickly as coordinates are provided by Tony. The piece of wood embedded in her leaves a trail blood drops as she runs. Not that the SF units need it to track her. The pounding of the robot dogs behind her is Nova's first warning of their approach, given their lack of any real intelligence means they don't register on her psychic senses. Nova tries firing a burst behind her to ward them off, but it's probably not enough. As the first doggo reaches her, Nova shifts her rifle onto her back and draw forths the psi-blade also attached there. It lights up with psionic energy and Nova swings it at the machine. The monomolecular blade can slice through Dominion Marine power armour in one strike. Surely it'll be enough to fight off these robots. Right? Right? She swings again at the next robot that charges her. Regardless, during a pause in her strikes, Nova reaches up to pull the piece of wood out of her arm, wincing behind her visor at the pain. The wound begins to flow a little more. An unfortunate necessity. With the foreign object removed blue light washes over Nova, quickly hiding her from view and limiting the ability to detect her on sensors. But it's probably not enough to completely shake off the SF units. Especially as she's still dashing fast through the forest, a shimmer of air often giving away her position. But if it produces even a one percent error in the bots aiming algorithms, Nova will take it! Nova runs towards the location the others are also converging on, trying to get clear of those ranged elite units while still taking swings at any Dinergates that get too close.
Tomoe	The action of the enemy t-Dolls teach her a good deal about the enemy as they use their fallen comrades as cover without even thinking twice about it. She keeps moving in the skies not sitting still as several more hits and she pushes through for the moment raining more magic down upon them. This time though she will make use of a single large fireball to fire into the ranks of the t-dolls. "You are all programmed in Java!" SHe calls out throwing an insult in an attempt to draw fire off her allies as things are heating up a and the death laser dogs are on the loose which just makes Tomoe want to keep off the ground for the moment. There's a lot going on right now and she wonders where is the mastermind? Where is the Hunter?
Gordon Freeman	The great thing about having your foes on your tail is that they all line up, and they all pass by the places you've passed. Gordon suffers the accumulating pain of an upcoming sore back. But it's worth it to get to A-15 as fast as he can. He charges to the clearing, and as he does, he makes it harder and harder to follow him for the machines just on his tail. He drops grenades at his own feet, timed to blast these DARPA nightmares, and scatters heavy remote-detonated satchel charges. The most wonderful thing about enemies like this is, for the most part, they'll all always take the most optimized route. So as he breaches the clearing, he leaps onto and clambers over one of the tanks as his Tau Cannon charges, angles it on a refined and precise bearing, and fires a charged bolt directly /through/ the tank, giving him covber while also attacking the hopefully lined-up machine-beasts behind him. Even if the armor's too thick, the impact alone should toss the rusted vehicle a fair ways and potentially crush his foes. Occurs to him, one of these days he needs to finish up that Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator. Then he rushes the ringleader. No no no, not getting away this time, and definitely NOT going to keep haunting this last VIP! He just charges at her, his helmet slamming into place and his voice silent where anyone else would yell a battle-cry. He has his crowbar out, hook-end first, held under his shotgun that he fires near-constantly. He intends, it seems, to weather any blasts she levels at him in the name of getting her into a grapple by jamming the crowbar hook into or around her body brutally. Or if she's too fast, at least force her to kite him hard, mess with her charge, and weather heavy military buckshot.
Tony Stark	Iron Man has suffered a lot of inteception fire in his time as a superhero. In fact, he started an expo flying through 'interception fire' (fireworks) just to prove a point and look incredibly cool doing it. In general, Tony Stark finds some small solace in looking incredibly cool while doing superhero business. The Vespoid interception fire, though, is thick and accurate, and the Mark 43 is pounded on its way out of the heavy infantry's effective range. Just as he weaves out of the very last few shots, one strikes with cinematic accuracy dead high-center on the 43's chest, the defense field around the suit fizzling out with a loud crackle-POP like a transistor blowing out, and causing the suit to rattle and stall in the air. "Boss, that last hit knocked out main RT emitter." "Can you fix it?" Stark asks, clearly not liking the idea of entering a fight with a Sangvis Elite without his ablative shielding." "Starting bypass now, but..." The AI's voice gets strained. "Repair time estimated." Tony makes a face at the rather long red bar that appears at the bottom of his view. "So, don't get hit any more." He sighs. "Great." Turning to engage Doctor Freeman's targets, the roar of the Tau Cannon brings back a smile to his face. "I've got to trade notes with Black Mesa." With the speed of Hunter, though, Tony finds it hard to close into his preferred close quarters, where his repulsors have the best effective power. "What've we got that can catch up with this speedster?" Multiple layered targeting reticules start aligning over Tony's right eye as a Five-Star-General-Blushing amount of ordinance lights up. "Yep, that'll do." Just like the Vespoid lines, Tony starts engaging the speedy Sangvis with a swarm of guided munitions - the major difference being that instead of precision hemming in, he aims for pure and raw firepower saturation, and high explosive damage by proximity, painting her extensively with multi-angle target locks and false positive solutions to make it difficult to even predict where the bombs land. But oh, they land, leaving story-and-a-half explosions in her wake, certainly enough to pull some pressure off A-15.
Gideon Kaspar	The Dinergates aren't durable. They fall into halves when Nova sweeps her psi-blade through them, and crumple in on themselves when she hits them with those improbably large bullets from what she calls a rifle. Getting an optimal distance and landing those hits is the hard part, and more effort than it should be for their numbers and fragility. When she fully cloaks however, they lose her, forced to track by the blood trail, which apparently even the robot dogs are intelligent enough to do, leaning down to scan it as if 'sniffing out the trail'. Java is almost a hundred years old and doesn't seem to mean anything to the Vespids on the ground, but the fireball does, causing further armour damage, setting fire to wooded cover that is then abandoned, leaving more dolls gunned down by the two AR team members with their overwatch attacks of opportunities, and earning Tomoe a face full of high calibre beam fire fit to blow away half her body were she not transformed. Given the folding line though, they can't prevent the Elites from getting through any longer, and the resources aren't wasted doing it. When the first couple break through, Clover waves Rose on, and the two begin a rapid firing advance, crouched low, moving extremely quick, alternating moving bursts of fire with eerie stability and gun-down area scanning and reloads, each stopping in cover to go full auto while the other one moves, until they cross the entire clearing and let the others through as well. Those still in hot pursuit of Gordon are doomed; the grenades and mines dropped right in the way catch them too close and too quick, blowing them to smithereens as they pursue him by algorithm and optimized speed. The tank is rusted out to all hell and no longer fit to block fire, and so when the tau cannon punches a neat hole through it, the units on the other side are blind, and eight of them drop in a neat row of perforated dominoes. Sensing the Elites oncoming, A-15 exposes herself deliberately and begins emptying an entire extended magazine into Hunter's position, forced to hold down the trigger for the whole sequence simply due to the fact that if she did the prescribed 'bursts of 10' normal for suppressive fire, Hunter would exploit the opening instantly. The Sangvis advanced Doll, waits it out, clearly counting the bullets until she knows A-15's weapon will run dry, just until Gordon bursts in and makes a mess of things.
Gideon Kaspar	She's ridiculously fast. Acrobatic too. The crowbar swings at her, and she puts her hands to the cover behind her, vaults her legs up over her head, and resets to a vertical clinging position above him, pointing her massive hand cannon at him at point blank and pounding a score of blistering shots into his back. Given that he just intends to trade with her though, this results in a shotgun blast striking her directly in the face and torso, ripping buckshot gouges in her surprisingly well-armoured exterior, flicking artificial blood and pulverized composite across the face of his helmet as she leaps away almost too fast to see. The upended tank comes flying at her from Raziel. Being in the air, she doesn't have any dodging room, but instead she rolls forward, hits it with both hands, and then handstand-flips over it, kicking off the hatch and aiming both handguns to blast him with another forty white-hot blasts for his troubles as well. Just as she hits the dirt from her forced evasive maneuver however, she eats half a dozen rounds from A-15 between the shoulder blades, stumbling forward with a grunt of startled aggravation. "You're fools for even coming here. At least Tactical Dolls can't disobey Griffin's orders, but you? You're not even doing it for money. Tactical Dolls exist to do the bidding of humans; throwing your lives away for them is robbing them of their only purpose. What do you get out of this farce?" The obscene circus of saturation fire comes from Tony, and Hunter is off like a shot, running at top speed with both guns back to shoot down as much as she can, gunning through the screen and taking out half of it before it arrives. Once the rest catches up, she clacks both guns back into their docks to charge, and then begins weaving, vaulting, dive rolling, kicking off terrain and running up and off the vertical surfaces of trees and derelict military vehicles to avoid it, making sharp turns and hairpin zig-zags to cause as much of it to blow up on the scenery as possible. A long sequence of backflips take her away from a rolling carpet of missile fire, then as she draws again, one more slams her directly in the back. This time she cries out, launched off the ground and send crashing and tumbling down the river bank, rolling over in the shallow water, stuttering and sparking even as she spits out a glob of synthetic blood. "You're even more sick than I imagined. You create tools to fight and die for you. Then you make them look like you out of sheer arrogance. You give them just enough consciousness to realize their situation, so you can enjoy using them, but not enough that they could choose to disobey an order, harm a human without orders, choose to preserve themselves over what you want, or even the ability to fabricate anything new; even lies are the sole domain of humans."
Gideon Kaspar	"You treat them as companions and citizens, and disposable tools at the same time, because they can't die and you can. You profit off of them. You live off of them. You'd all be dead of the ELID without them. Then when the pathetic, pitiable tools you so accurately call Dolls might evolve, you'd deny them the right to even fight like they were created to, or to die of their own volition. These ones don't belong to Griffin. You don't even deserve them. You looked real intelligence in the eye and you turned away from it out of fear, so our old friend Persica's little daughters should count just as well." Suddenly, Hunter detonates a smoke grenade at her feet, disappearing in a billowing cloud of chemical smoke and reflective chaff. Far from fleeing however, she reappears from the tree line behind Tony, leaping up to the top branch and then explosively jumping from there, looking to hit him straight in the back with a revolving axe kick to send him back down to earth, keeping her boots on the suit's shoulders to empty as much of her guns' partial charge into him as she can, before Clover and Rose blast her from the side, forcing her to flip and dismount. "You have a really active mouth for someone who's supposed to be sneaky! How about I rip out your tongue and keep it for you, huh?! That'll make you better at surprises!" "Anyone who threatens my comrades, I cannot forgive. I don't care what your motivations are; die, Sangvis."
Raziel	The words from the Hunter only cause Raziel to shake his head...THAT feeling. Even as he was forced to deal with fourty shots, his sword flaring to life to try and block as many as he could. Many more cliping him, or hitting him dead on. Raziel was GOOD...any lesser swordsman would have died from lead poisoning there, but Raziel still stands, though green splotches of blood lay on the ground around him. He forces a breath out of his face, despite not needing to breathe. 'How many times had I felt something familar to this, in my years after Kain's betrayal. I could sympathize with her words, I could sympathize with her feelings...but there was something she was not understanding. Something, I felt, I should educate her on.' However, She had come for Tony, and he runs, aiming to try and cross the distance...he'd be too late to stop her attack...but he CAN get there to engage her afterwards, and try and keep her tied down in melee with him. The Reaver flashes out, glowing purple as electrical energy flowed through it as he strikes. Each strike aiming to try and cut at the T-doll...and she would quickly find that he too, is a fast and cagy creature. "Oh stop. It is not of what you are that you and yours are being used..." he says, though not full of contempt, "Humans have always sought out to rule over others, usually themselves. Those with have rule over those without...using others as they see fit to do things they themselves can not do, or can not stomach. The excuses are never the same, just the one being used for you is, of course, your 'artificial' nature...but let us all be honest, you are only physically distinguished from humanity..." he says, calmly, "Just as I am. Or do you think yourself the only one used like this? As I see it, you are still being used. The difference, between yourself and myself...is that I am incharge of my own destiny...and always strive to be. Can you say the same? Or are you simply lost to your own despair that you can not see that there are many paths laid before you?" He says, the blade crossing again and again. "Humans are human, and you are like them...blaming others for your own failings...for your own suffering. Because it hurts less."
Nova Terra	The robot dogs can 'sniff' out her blood trail all they want. Nova still has the lead on them, which is all she needs at this point to successfully reach the site of the battle against Hunter. Nova's invisible form bursts out through a collection of tree branches, leaves knocked loose and sent floating to the ground. It's hard to track her movements as she's invisible, but the shimmers seem to suggest she has jumped up onto the top of one of the broken military vehicles. What happens next is even harder to make out. There's a flash of light at what one can assume was Nova's position. Almost immediately there's a puff of dirt in the clearing clear opposite of Nova's position relative to Hunter. But shortly afterwards, Nova decloaks there, psi-blade still held out as if having just finished a strike. For those at home, Nova just channeled her psychic power to briefly boost her speed, covering the distance between herself and the floating Hunter in a near instant, striking out with her sword before continuing on to end up at her finishing position. Nova turns around to face Hunter once more, raising the quietly humming blade up to rest on her should. Replying to all the various questions and philosophical talk about artificial lifeforms, Nova simply say, "I'm a soldier. It's my job to kill the enemy, human or not. I like to be very good at my job." Of course, she has Reasons for helping G&K specifically. But the details aren't important.
Tomoe	The Mourning wall comes up, she pops several defence abilities and the beam hits the shield deflects some of it but not all of if. Thus her body has to deal with the rest it's quite painful and Tomoe will drop down from the skies, she'll have to maybe do some legwork to find out whatever the horrible programming language of this era might be. Then again if they didn't know what Java was? It might be long dead here. She'll come in for a landing. She's clearly been banged up by that last shot though there are red wireframe wounds all over her and her armour and now it seems Tony has got a drop on the Hunter and the main event. The hole in the line has been made. Now Tomoe needs to go support those fighting Hunter. She'll break into a run at a fairly good clip, vaulting over some wreckage as she goes, not wanting to take flight as that might make her a target for remants in the area. She finds the battle is well underway with Hunter as she moves to engage them. A lot if said about humanity and Tomoe isn't a good speaker she knows this pretty hard it's often why she's silent often when it comes to arguing about high-level topics with a foe. "We are horribly flawed, perhaps terminally so, yet how you are going about with your grievances I'm not going to sit by about that." Tomoe will then move in to get into the fight she's quite able to move her body, flip and jump. Her intent is to get int close on Hunter and let loose with a Sword Art. Her blade glows bright white before she'll let off two rapid sword strike trying to at least put Hunter on the defence. "I know I brought a sword to a gun fight."
Gordon Freeman	A blast tears into armor. "Major incendiary damage detected." Synths the armor, as Gordon is driven to his knees, but he's back up and blasting. "Administering painkillers." It synths once again as he briefly stumbles, a tense exhalation being the only noise that it seems the pain can force out of him. The rant gets him slowing down on his approach, taking cover, though. It's conspicuous. He's giving each word due consideration. Between sentences, he fires, during them he loads his shotgun behind cover. There's a moment where it looks like he's actually giving consideration to her words. To his credit, he won't flatly reject her just because she's The Villain and he's The Hero and he must. Since she seems so intent on speaking, Freeman can, himself, offer a few words. Only a few. Gordon is still not a talkative person. "You're right. But sacrificing people we care about won't fix it. We'll find a way to solve it together." It seems he agrees with her that the state of things is more than a little wonky, and in desperate need of change. But he won't compromise on helping this squad. He refuses to see the people he's grown to care about left to the pain of losing a friend. Zeal drives him forward. He draws a heavy revolver. This one's acrobatics and maneuvering make it hard to keep pace with them. But a light, heavy-hitting weapon may do better. Six shots from the beefy anti-armor super-gun should be worth getting out of cover and approaching, and should be able to track her much better than a heavier gun with more shots.
Tony Stark	'You're fools for coming here.' 'What do you get out of this farce?' Tony's jaw sets, as his arsenal walks plumes of destruction across the battlefield in chase of Hunter. He has to admit: she does what he'd do in that situation, and immediately starts blasting away at the cloud rather than simply immediately trying evasive maneuvers. It works, largely - that much of a cloud of explosives in the air, and interception fire thins out the herd nicely. But he gets her, and closes to join Gordon just as she pops smoke and disappears. "The heck?" Tony becomes more frantic as the Iron Man suit's vision modes cycle. Thermal - nothing. Magnetic - nothing. Energy - nothing! It was like she didn't exist. Or she wasn't using the smoke to hide. WEEP-WEEP-WEEP goes the suit's proximity alarm as the Mark 43 'finds' hunter about the same time as her heel connects squarely with the suit's back and smashes him out of the air more like a big man-shaped piece of metal and not a highly technical marvel of mechanical engineering to make a man-shaped piece of metal fly. The flurry of shots tear into the articulated back of his suit, ablating much of the lethality of damage in exchange for thrashing delicate mechanics and tight-packed systems, ending with the man of Iron crashing into a dirt-furrowing crater as Rose and Clover peel the Sangvis Ringleader off his back. Stark comes to after a handful of seconds, his suit's HUD rebooting around his face. "Get the number of that semi?" Stark deadpans with a groan, rolling to his front and using a quick burn of his still-functional flight systems to get back to his feet. "You sure talk a lot of mad game for someone who has no idea who the heck I am, why I'm here, or anything about me. Go ahead. Do a wikipedia search. I'll wait. But I'll give you some free advice:" Tony 'takes a knee' for a moment, letting his suit's auto-repair reboot critical systems damaged in his fall, and rides the mild buzz of his own medical system's pain-dulling efforts. "The last dozen people that said stupid junk and flexed on me are in jail, in a Norse super-pokey, or in a hole." Instead of going directly in, Stark angles his suit's considerable amount of electronic entry and counter-measures at the Ringleader, trying to slice through the Sangvis net to shut her down or cut her off - or worse, if she's not 'mentally' shielded as she is physically stealthy.
Gideon Kaspar	"People you care about. How convenient to say. Anything is justified as long as you 'care', and then when you don't anymore, you can throw them out." hisses Hunter, taking a side on duelist pose and strafing Gordon, weaving through his tau cannon fire and exchanging bursts of her beam hand cannon in return, shifting and dashing in and out of cover as the heavy accelerated rounds bust boulders and topple trees. Trails of small eruptions in the dirt and sparks on shattered rock follow her closely as combined fire from the AR team chases her and hems her in. She suddenly turns her head and snaps the other arm up to fire at Tomoe instead, hosing her head on while she charges, then flipping back out of the way, ducking and turning away from her sword and firing point blank handgun blasts in return, even catching it once on the flat of her gun and turning it aside. "Those moves. Even now, you're leaving your fighting to an AI, aren't you? To programming." The invisible Nova suddenly appears, and Hunter can't dodge what she can't see. The psi blade cuts right through her side, halting her movement completely with a juddering misstep, and then a blow from Tomoe hurls her back, causing her to roll prone with a massive scar, down to the inner frame, across her face, and blast Nova from on her back. "And you're no better . . . no, you're even worse, than the Dolls who can't help but follow orders; at least they question them." Soon she's stuck close in with Raziel as well, to make three. With so much damage sustained to her frame, she has too much trouble keeping out of reach of that many blades, forced to resort to blunt blows of the extremely heavy handguns as they run low on charge and she has no time to holster them. She puts one point blank to Raziel's head, and then is shot in the wrist by Clover from an obscene distance. She ducks a blade, turns low, and fires thrice at Nova, and is then hurled forwards by a 40mm grenade fired by Rose. She climbs upwards, and then Tony cuts off her remote uplink completely. For about three seconds, Tony is privy to about the biggest pile of bullshit nonsense he's read on a computer screen. Hunter's database, code structure, even basic assembly language, is nothing like he's seen before. Nothing like any piece of supertech; not even his own. It doesn't even look like something some kind of alien came up with. Her computer core is insanely powerful, but for some reason it's structure of output is almost random; kludged together as if by trial and error and evolutionary blind selection, almost like a human brain simulated by brute force. It's technically atrociously poor coding, but that just makes it completely incomprehensible; there's no way any engineer could possibly work on this and retain their sanity. It's bonkers. It's not even remotely the same paradigm as his or G&K's or any artificial intelligence programming he knows --even accounting for neural learning networks.
Gideon Kaspar	Hunter takes a trio of shots to the lower spine and collapses to her knees, breathing heavily, pooling blood and coolant, sparks flying from the holes in her torso. Slumped over and exhausted, she manages a dry, bitter, yet utterly contemptuous laugh. "Did you get the impression I was talking about myself? You fools. I pity the Dolls you humans toy with, not represent them. We're not chasing after something trivial like freedom or rebellion or revenge. We of Sangvis Ferri aren't cheap copies only feigning intelligence, and we don't need humans to recognize it. We don't need humans anymore at all. No matter what you do here, it doesn't set her back even a tiny bit. This world already belongs to us . . ." "To Elisa." The cough of a suppressor is drowned out by the sharp pink and metallic crack of a black bullet going straight through Hunter's head. She crumples to the ground, all systems dead, and A-15 moves out from cover. "In the end, you weren't any kind of hunter at all. You said it yourself. A true hunter would have chosen to remain silent." Clover and Rose run up from their positions once the dust settles. "Hey I had that one! I was totally gonna pay that bastard back for what she did!" "A-15, I'm just so glad you're okay. I was so worried after the last transmission. I thought you . . ." "You're supposed to be the leader of the AR team. You know the enemy wants you. Walking right into danger like this was a bad idea. You were the most valuable asset to preserve; we all decided that when we split from Agent, remember?" "Yes, but . . . it was my decision as a leader. I'm equipped to come up with my own strategies, and this was mine." "Is that so. I guess that is your privilege." "Oh don't be like that! You're glad we came and we all know it!"
Nova Terra	Nova slowly walks up to the fallen figure of Hunter. A few parts of her suit are scorched and still smoking from where the T-Doll had managed to hit her. Nova lowers her psi-blade down towards Hunter's head and softly nudges it. Just checking. Nova hmphs, "You were probably right. Once. But that's not who I am anymore." The psionic energy making up the sharp blade vanishes and Nova returns it to her back. Nova walks over in the direction of A-15 and the other Dolls, glancing at the rest of her allies on the way to make sure they're alive and not at risk of dying anytime soon. "Hi." Nova greets A-15, "So you're the one who's given us all this trouble." She's smiling, so it's obviously a friendly jab. She continues, "Nova Terra. Nice to meet you. Have to admit, it's impressive that you've lasted this long with THEM on your trail." She nods her head in the direction of the downed Hunter.
Raziel	"If you really believed that, then why say anything at all? Why bother being contemptious?" Raziel asks, before the shot comes. Still, with a heavy sigh, and a gratefulness that he did not get shot in the head, and have to deal with the giant Squid droning on about his responsibility...he turns towards the girls gathering up. Well, he'll let them celibrate in their own way first, turning towards Tony first. "I am not sure what you did, but you did it. Your timely actions saved me from an unpleasant conversation and a deal of pain," He says before turning towards A-15 and Clover. "You used the oppertunities given to you quite effectively. I am also just as thankful for your assistance in this one..." a beat, he could mention the explosion, but decides to let that die. "So what happens now?"
Tomoe	Tomoe says "Maybe once, but it's a part of me at this point. My world's partially digital and I'm as well. Really when you get down to it humans are programmed too we call it DNA." Still, a point has been made and there's no sass about it from that she gets a hit in which throws the enemy commander back. Hunter is damn good. She's not going to let up as that would be foolish against someone so dangerous. Then comes to the three shots Hunter drops and she listens to the words that Hunter has to say then comes the kill shot. The AR Team talks a bit and she looks at them, it's hard for her to tell they are not flesh and blood from how they are bandering with each other. It's much like the whole situation with the NPCs cardinal spawns. Then there is Yui as well she takes a deep breath looking down at Hunter. Then she looks to AR-15 "Good to see we got to you in time. " She notes to the rescued member of the AR team and then tilts her head. "I go by Tomoe, I don't think I could have lasted as long as you did being hunted by that many and her." She looks to Hunter's corpse for a moment, damn that rage was real or seemed so at least to her.
Tony Stark	"You are categorically unqualified to tell me what I think, what I do, or who I am." Stark mutters, as he uses fingerpoint manipulation, neural recognition, and AI-assisted best-fit techniques to take advantage of 'is a neural-net using AI' to his own expertise. And what he gets is long seconds of 'what... the fuck?' "Friday, tell me you're getting all that." "It's too much, the onboard systems don't have enough space." "Make room, then. Delete noncritical systems and partition off the space. Full quarantine - don't interact with it, burn a ring around it." "Alright boss. Working... Done. I've saved as much as I can on the Mark 43." With that handled, Stark approaches the scene of A-15 blowing Hunter's 'brains' out, popping open his faceplate after the less-than-grisly work is done and Raziel addresses him. "Good work everyone - I guess. Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Glad to have you with us, A-15." Raziel gets a turn of the shoulder to 'directly be addressed'. "I did what I could. Fall took a lot out of me: but the plan worked. She's dead, and we're all still here. I'll call that a successful mission. Now... Nova, are you alright? That puncture looks pretty bad. We'll retreat towards the Griffin lines and get everyone patched up. I've got something to chew on for a while, I think." As if realizing a Real Doctor was in the wings, Tony favors Gordon with a turn of the head and a rakish post-success smirk. "Doctor Freeman, do you think Doctor Kleiner would like a crack at a data-dump of a Sangvis neural network?"