Nerrone's Rangers IC [Thread 1]

"Got it." Bor adjusted his heading and flew toward the Engineering district. A few minutes later he touched down in the same clearing the Lacuna had less than an hour ago. He killed the engines and opened up the cockpit. "I think this is the right place."

He decided to try the comm again - now that they were much closer to Team B, maybe their signal would make it this time. "Bor to Dagon and Xol. Come in, Dagon and Xol."

For a moment, the sounds of gunfire and inaudible shouts rose above the sea of white noise on the comms — perhaps one of the voices even sounded like Dagon... But then it sank beneath the surface once more, and if there was a response, Bor could not make it out.
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((Tala has given me permission to take control of his characters, as he shall be rejoining us at some point.))

From a gutter by the side of a road in the Engineering District of Las Thaddas, a low groan drifted by on the evening breeze. In the shadows, at the edge of a pool of light cast by a nearby street lamp, the source of this mournful noise sat up groggily, one hand held against his head in an attempt to stop the invisible gremlins from pounding at it with hammers.

Talvox was having a rough night... Which was doubly unfortunate, because he was pretty certain he hadn't enjoyed several rounds of his favorite intoxicating beverages prior to finding himself in this predicament, as was usually the case. He squinted and looked around, trying to piece together any memories from the last few hours, and his eyes fell upon an unconscious, armoured form next to him.

"Crycell," His comrade didn't respond.
"CRYCELL!" he poked Crycell's face tentatively. Crycell groaned.
"No need to yell," he slowly sat up, rubbing his eyes and blinking as they adjusted to the light of the street lamp.
Talvox was relieved, and managed to put together a few more words: "...What happened?"
"...I think... I think we got hit by the ship..."
"...The ship? ...Oh..." The memories came flooding back. Right, the ship. The Lacuna. Spode-cursed landing gear, when I get my hands on Quark I'll...

Talvox continued his disgruntled internal monologue as they helped each other to their feet, both of them still a little disoriented. He tried the comms: "Talvox to Lacuna, over? Talvox to Lacuna, come in? ...Hmm. Nothing."

Crycell dusted himself off, and the pair started moving towards the opening that lead beneath the Engineering District, determined at least to link up with Team B and make up for lost time in any way they could.

"Let me tell you," Talvox said, "I've never seen landing gear like that before,"
"Tal..."
"—I mean Spode! Did they rip those things off the underside of a frigate? I hear sometimes they—"
"Tal..."
"—and yet I keep hearing people telling me that repulsor-fields phased out the whole concept decades ago but—"
"TAL!"
"What, Crycell?! I've got a splitting headache, we're cut off from the others and my helmet is dented! Could you not go five seconds without—"

And then Bor's fighter landed on him.

Flank, still laughing maniacally in his crazed, bloodthirsty state, fired again and again. His enthusiasm drained from his body when he heard a small, metal sphere bounce towards him and roll to a halt. It looked like two hemispheres joined together with a band made of flashing lights. The grenade was beeping and flashing in sync, getting faster and higher in pitch in the time before its detonation. Flank made a move to kick it, but it had been cooked for too long.

BANG
The EMP detonated and Flank was caught in the blast radius, taking the full payload of the pulse.
"Aaaaarh!" Flank called out and fell to the ground. Because of his metal implants, the electricity took a greater effect on him. The robotic eyes in his chest and on his FLAK cannon were blinded. His cannon shut down and fell beside him with a clang. His stealth helmet suffered too. His comm link, as useless as it was, was put out of business and his stealth field unraveled. His jet boots wouldn't function and he couldn't shoot; it was all electrically powered.
The noise that the grenade made was so loud he could only hear a persistent ringing. As the electricity coursed over his skin, through his metal implants and all throughout his body, Flank was overcome by a sharp, biting sting that covered his body like painful goose bumps.

He was blind, deaf and numb. Only his taste remained and that was dominated by the greasy aroma on the air.
Flank's armour, however, was designed to partially absorb electricity. 27%, in fact. But that only meant that it hurt a little less and the effects wouldn't last as long. Even then, the eye in his chest began to flicker between the present scene and visual static.
Flank could sense nothing, but he knew that if he remained still he would be shot. Enslaved by the effects of the EMP, he crawled across the doorway with all the speed he could muster. When he couldn't crawl any further, he figured that he had met the wall on the other side.

He began to feel around for the body of the guard he killed. His only means of determining where it was was to gauge the resistance he encountered as he patted his hands on every available surface. He was trying to find the guard's blaster.

Edit: Darn, I erased all of this post...It was written wrong...

Rhak switched his attention towards the Aegraa. He could see his trusty pistol at the feet of the massive alien mechanic.
Dodging the flames, Rhak reached the pistol sliding towards it.
He grabbed it, the comfortable weight in his hand. The Aegraa seemingly distracted, the gas container visible for Rhak.
He raised the pistol and fired a small burst against the gas container.

"That was gunfire!" Bor exclaimed. "I'd better get moving. You stay here and guard the ship. Once I'm out, press this button" he indicated a large switch on the console. "...to activate the cloak. The ship will still be visible if someone knows where to look, but it should be obscured sufficiently to escape major attention. I'll be back soon."

He opened the cockpit, jumped out and almost tripped over Talvox, who was lying underneath one of the landing struts screaming his head off. "Holy s***!" Bor jumped back into the fighter and expertly moved the ship a few feet away from Talvox and Crycell before setting down again.

"Talvox? Crycell?" He jumped out of the ship again. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be with Team B!

"We woke up here a couple of minutes ago," Crycell replied.
"Talvox here," Crycell pointed to him, "got hit by your ship because he wasn't paying attention to me."
"I think you broke my spleen..." Talvox muttered, in the general direction of Bor. It wasn't actually broken, but it felt like it. He tried to move his left hand, but nothing happened. His hand was limp.
"Bor, I think Talvox's hand is broken..." Crycell said.

"Serves you right for not paying attention to your surroundings," Bor grumbled impatiently. "You'll have to wait with Kwa in the ship. Crycell and I are going to help Team B."

Crycell went to follow Bor, while Talvox went to find the entrance to the ship. When he found it, he entered, but hesitantly.

"Where the heck is everyone else?" Crycell asked Bor. As they continued onwards.

"You seem rather sprightly all of a sudden, for someone who was apparently too crippled to go out on the main mission scant hours ago," Kwa said levelly to Bor, stepping out of the fighter and alighting on the ground. She winced ever so slightly as her neck twinged again.

She turned away from Bor and addressed Talvox: "What about you, soldier? Think you can still use a firearm?"

"Not with my left hand. My right hand, maybe. In any case, I still have my lightning blade." Talvox said to Kwa. He pulled it out of his pack. It was totally mangled.
"Okay scratch that. I need a firearm." Talvox said.

"Here, I have an extra Plasma Pulser." Bor gave Talvox one of his guns. "Hold on tight, it kicks a bit when it fires."

In answer to Kwa's inquiry, he explained: "I wouldn't say 'sprightly'. My legs still hurt, but I should be okay for combat, as long as I don't have to do a ton of running."

Then he and Kwa explained their current situation to Talvox and Crycell.

Guards are coming their way and Chalen had two options. One, use his clawhands to scare (hopefully) or kill them by driving straight through their bodies like what he did with the insectoids. Or two, find something in his backpack that his cousin Cogs gave him. Chalen rememberd the heads up concerning it. "Be extremly careful cuz. Some of these beauties or in your case *toys* are dangerous and they are only to be used if you and your friends are caught in some gunfire." Chalen thought this is probbaly one of those moments. He quickly scrambled through his backpack. Chalen wanted a bit of action before the others got theirs.

"Hmm." Kwa seemed skeptical of Bor's fitness, but decided not to call him on it a second time. They needed all the fighters they could get.

"Very well. Follow Team B down Concourse Alpha and link up with them, then see if you can track down Team A. I shall continue attempting to raise them on the comms."

She made her way back aboard Bor's fighter, "Don't make me wait too long; this planet is beginning to irk me."

Flank was once again in a desperate situation. He was electrically charged, blind, deaf, and numb and his cannon was nothing more that a paperweight on his shoulder. He urged himself to find a solution, and in his concentration, had a flashback:

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Planet Cortyax, second military training facility, one week after receiving hybrid implants

Flank was sitting amongst a crowd of other FLAK Ravis', all identical to him; young and eager. He was in the front row, and Fleet Admiral Raylaq was pacing along the length of the assembly. He was lecturing.

"Make no mistake, soldiers, you are now weapons. Your hybrid implants make you some of the strongest technologically advanced Ravis' this planet has ever seen. But there are some drawbacks.
One. You are now three times your original mass. That is why you all had to undergo months of body building before you got these guns. You had to get used to carrying it around all the time.
"Two. Your ability to swim is now completely compromised, unless you can attach some boat motors to your rump.
"Three. You are now vulnerable to electricity like never before. Even though there is carbon and Kevlar mixed in the metal, it still conducts electricity. That it why your armour batteries are designed to absorb any excess charge in your body. It might just save your life. If, for any reason you suffer prolonged exposure to electricity, touch something metal to neutralise the charge..."
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Flank's consciousness was dragged back to the battle at hand, but he was full of realisation. Immediately he blindly searched for the giant door, groping around with his hands and wings even though he could still feel the painful sting of the EMP. At last, his hand met the door. Relief swept over him as the charge from the EMP drained out of him and into the metal portal. Flank could no longer feel any sting and the ringing he heard was beginning to fade of its own accord.
The eye in his chest immediately provided a better view, even if it was still patchy, and his cannon was still limp. That would get better later as his battery absorbed and regulated power to the rest of his body.

With the return of his senses Flank immediately spotted and picked up the guard's blaster rifle. He bravely stepped out into the doorway, and with a practised hand, fired at the troops who had turned to face him.

"That makes two of us." Bor, Crycell and Talvox entered the tunnel and headed down the same way Team B had gone.

After a few minutes of traveling, Bor heard something up ahead. It sounded like some kind of battle. "I think this is it!" he whispered to the others. He crouched down, grunting as his knees complained, and kept moving.

Another minute, and the three Rangers entered a large, cavernous room. The first thing he noticed up ahead was a long string of flame coming from a weapon in the hands of an Aegraa missing half his face. There were several others in the room, most lying injured on the ground but several up ahd shooting at each other.

Smoke from the fire and weapons made it hard to see much more from this distance, but Bor decided to attack anyway. He raised his Plasma Pulser and fired three shots - one at the Aegraa's flamethrower, and two at its head.

As the others departed, Kwa fired up Bor's fighter and lifted off, striking upwards into the ionosphere and entering stealth mode as she entered low orbit over Ariid. Floating, invisible, high above the surface, without the ability to contact any of the Rangers until the jamming signal was removed, she sighed and leaned back in the pilot's seat.

I wonder if Bor keeps any books in here for long stakeouts...
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"A cloaking device. We should have anticipated this."

"Indeed, commander: it appears the resources at this group's disposal are more formidable than we had imagined."

The forces of the Coalition had taken around ten minutes to regroup, and had hence decided to retire to a landing pad in the Market District — the opposite side of the city from where Bor and Kwa had set down. The task force's commander, flanked as always by the hulking power-armoured form of the Sentinel, had decided to step outside to continue the call with Dallan, who was speaking from their control room on Tareen.

"Do we have any further leads?"

"Not as of yet, sir. It will be a few hours until we can bring our nearest remote satellite to bear on the city, and until then we have little to go on, besides the fact that they must still be somewhere in Las Thaddas."

"So we wait. Let the team know that... Wait — what's going on over there?" In the background, someone in the control room had started shouting. The words were inaudible from the other side of the comm-link, but the urgency was unmistakable.

"Err... Sir, we have an update on events in Santa Frerraro." Dallan took a deep breath, "You're not going to like this."

There was a pause.

"...Tell me."
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Flank scored a pair of hits on one of the four troopers firing on him, taking down his unfortunate target's shields and searing through the man's shoulder armour: he was sent sprawling by the impact, and decided it would be in his best interests to stay low after that. Their target now fully visible, the other three redoubled their efforts to take out Flank with their blaster rifles.

The other members of Team A were under similar pressure, as blaster bolts flew left, right and center. One of their charges was already in place, but Dagon was becoming impatient: "Spode curse it! We need to get those things in place before we're all turned into barbecue bits!"

Crouching as best he could behind a rusty pipe, he wondered if the enemy would be so eager to attack them when they were brandishing a detonator primed to demolish this room...

((Charges in place: 1/7. Enemies at large: 10))
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At this point, the Aegraa with the flamethrower was more than a little annoyed by the situation: his two bumbling co-workers had both sustained pretty serious wounds, and he was the only one that still had his weapon in his hands.

Pathetic little blighters.

He growled, seeing a flash of movement off to his left as Rhak closed in, and swung his weapon, aiming to stove in his assailant's skull with the barrel of his flamethrower. He misjudged the distance and his strike swept straight over Rhak's head, but the movement was just enough to prevent them both being consumed in a fireball when Rhak fired his pistol at close range: instead of penetrating the fuel tank, the shot scorched his back.

Then, to add to his woes, three more hostile creatures arrived on the scene, and a series of blaster bolts flew at him. Two missed entirely, leaving black scorch-marks on the concrete surface of the concourse, but another two hit his suit, causing superficial damage, and the last put a dent in his flamethrower's barrel. He saw a flash of red, and turned his ponderous form to face the newcomers. The Aegraa pulled the trigger: for a moment, the weapon sputtered hesitantly, but then a tongue of flame leaped from the nozzle, sweeping towards Bor, Talvox and Crycell.

Even through Flank was good with firearms other than his own, he was not totally impressed by the results the blaster he carried yielded. The shots were beginning to pull to the left at varying degrees and it was hard to compensate for it. He was running out of ammo, too. But the time it bought him was essential. The sight had completely returned to his chest eye and was beginning to return to his scope. His jet boots came online again as well.
His stealth helmet, however, was still on the fritz and he still couldn't move nor fire his FLAK cannon.

With three of his assailants remaining, he rapidly fired all the remaining ammunition at them to make them either flinch or take cover again. Then, he hurled the empty weapon over arm at the head of one of the three troopers, and ran at another. When he had covered half the distance, he jumped into the air, spread his wings and activated his jet boots once again, this time in an attempt to ram his target into the large, metal pipe behind him with his superior mass.

"Hold s***!" Bor ducked as the wave of fire swept over him, scorching his helmet but leaving the rest of him relatively unharmed. He fired again, this time four pulses at the Aegraa's head.

Rhak hadn't survived this long if it weren't for his ability to use whatever distraction came available.
While the Aegraa turned its attention towards three new figures, Rhak shot another burst towards the gas containers.

Celdryc slowly made his way up to where the next pipe was, using some of the other pipes as footholds. Eventually he made it as close as he could get to it and managed to place the second charge. There were no more nearby, so he scrambled around the room looking for more of the pipes. He thought he saw one right in the middle of the battle, but he decided to ignore it for the time being. Another red pipe soon came into view, and Celdryc headed over to place the third charge, avoiding any blaster fire that went astray from the main battle and reached where he was.
_________________________________________________________________

IO saw some nearby crates and took cover behind them, just as Talvox,Bor, and Crycell entered the room.He took the opportunity when the Aegraa was distracted by their entrance to shoot at the gas tank on the Aegraa's back, using his wrist blaster for more accuracy.

The Aegraa had had it with these people: another few shots tore through his suit, and then finally a bolt found its mark on his gas tank. He screamed in rage, pressing the emergency release on the strap holding the fuel canister to his back and lobbing it as hard as he could in the direction of Bor, Crycell and Talvox; to him, the half-empty container weighed little more than a wooden chair.
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Flank's sudden charge took his target by surprise: the soldier had only time to squeeze off three shots from his rifle at close range before being bulldozed. Something cracked in his chest as he was crushed between Flank's bulk and the pipe behind him, and he let out a yelp of shock. The other two leveled their rifles at Flank and took steps backwards, not wanting to open fire yet for fear of hitting their comrade.

Meanwhile, a frag grenade flew across the room, arcing straight towards where Chalen and Kaaran were taking cover.

Bor managed to dodge the gas tank, but at a price: his legs gave out underneath him and he collapsed to the ground gasping in pain. He managed to hold on to his gun, but was in no condition to fire it. He vaguely recalled hearing an explosion, then everything went dark and he passed out.

Rhak had also had enough. The large muscular mechanic just didn't went down. He was out of ideas, wanting to spare his suprise for later.
One idea struck him, a so abstract idea that might even work.

With an open gesture, Rhak went towards the giant Aegraa screaming through his mask:
"Not so tough without your flamethrower?!"
"Come on, battle me! No weapons, I promise! Just you and I. What do you say? Or are you afraid?"

The tank hit Crycell hard in the stomach, while smacking Talvox in the legs. Talvox stood up, after getting knocked down by it, and then the tank Exploded on Crycell. While Rhak distracted the beast, Talvox ran forward and attempted to grapple the beast.

Crycell, however, felt the tank explode on him, and it seared a ton of his armor, and he may have broken his arm. He then fainted.