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RP: YSS Kaiyō Mission 35: Kishi Kaisei

Underwater

William waited a safe distance away while the charge was set, keeping an eye on the surrounding sea floor for threats. With the countdown, he crouched down braced for the shockwave. When the blast hit him, he smiled. "Damn, Asuka. Do you make fireworks for fun? If so, I was planning a party..." He said jokingly, but let himself trail off as things began popping off.

Mishhuvurthyar Base

Following Hoshi and Asuka down into the base, he found Aiko once more. At her order, a wolfish grin played across the captain's face. "Say no more, Princess." His two shoulder mounted plasma rifles unfurled and William held up both forearms, revealing his chainguns. Looking like a mad minute at the range, all four weapons began to spew fire into the bay trying to pin the enemy down.
 
The NMX that Molli's tentacles seized in an iron grip were flailing against her claws, their superhuman strength straining at each individual limb to such an extent that it took all of the Nepleslian's focus to keep them pinned against the wall. The mental strain on its own was enough to make her nose bleed go from a trickle to a steady stream, and black spots were starting to pop in and out of her vision. This strain was likely why she couldn't fully understand Hoshi's order--how could she force them through a hole of rushing water? Even if Molli could overpower all six of her captives, she had doubts about whether they'd survive the journey without drowning.

"Kent...do...that..." Molli replied through gritted teeth, before raising her shotgun and taking aim at each of her captives with shaking arms. "Ah don't...wanna shoot...you!" she warned, the barrel of her weapon glowing ominously with aethershot that would surely eviscerate any target at such close range.
 
Not seeing Miori covering Asuka yet, Hoshi was pulled towards the engineer.

“Job is to blow the base, so keep it fast but thorough,” Hoshi told her.

The Mishhuvurthyar were not about to ignore a hostile Yamtaian power armor working the controls in their own engineering bay. Hoshi popped a sabot round out of her LATR into the Mishhuvurthyar descending on Asuka’s position.

Molli’s grievances against the order pulled at Hoshi’s attention momentarily. Initially, the captain wanted to jump between Molli’s shotgun and the Nekovalkyrja held by her kalamari arms. Even as they spat out insults between breathless gasps as they watched the water rise. One of them had taken out their side pistol while the water raised up past their shins. Her face was covered by Molli’s kalamari arms and she couldn’t take a clear shot but snapped the trigger on the Impulse rifle wildly. Her sister wailed like a banshee, pulling at the clamps on the Mindy accessory keeping her pinned and Hoshi could see the strain Molli was under.

Supporting either the orders the captain had given Asuka or the ones she had given Molli were at odds now. Hoshi couldn’t be in two places at once and everyone else was engaging.

”Our mission is to eliminate the Mishhu forces. All of them," Yui had said at the end of last year to Hoshi during her wrist slapping when it had come to light that the Kaiyō captain hadn’t taken her best shot at Overseer Charbon, leaving her alive on Urtullan. Something in Hoshi’s gut felt wrought with pain at the indecision that she was faced with choosing between.

“Stop them from resisting or stop them altogether,” Hoshi begrudgingly scraped off the words to Molli like her tongue was sandpaper. Hoshi ignored Molli’s refusal and the NMX Neko’s cutting words altogether. Her re-focusing on the Mishhuvurthyar giving chase to Asuka meant that it would not catch the engineer in its tentacled grip as Hoshi’s sabots ripped into it. Once the new Rikugun girl, Miori, relieved Hoshi and had Asuka’s back, the captain could back up Molli and whatever decision the Neplslian had made.

William’s plasma rifles and chainguns created a cacophony for all. For the NMX it created an overtly hostile environment that only a few minutes ago had been untroubled by the likes of this death-dealing Yamataian and Neplesslian joint force. For those forces, the sound of his quadruple set of guns was music to their ears as he took down one after another unarmored NMX Nekovalkyrja and did indeed pin down the remaining Mishhuvurthyar.

Hoshi and Aiko’s earlier combined weapons fire had taken the first Advanced’s life and two remained. Smarter than the first to die, one of these was cagey: the one Hoshi had engaged as it pounced towards Asuka’s position. Her sniped shots had made it take cover—though it knew this room better than the Kaiyō crew and was on its home turf. Behind one of the power banks and its adjoining wall, it was able to take cover in a way that meant it was screened from future shots from Aiko, Sif, or Hoshi and had found a route that would lead it back to Asuka.

The other Mishhuvurthyar was engaged. It had tried to keep up with its work fixing what had been broken in the explosion. But as Aiko’s stab into its back was followed up by Sif’s quick flurry into both its body and maw, those few tentacles that clung to its work slid away. Falling gracelessly from the panel and into the water, they slipped away along with the rest of its spiny body. A bloody mark sat in the water where its body had been momentarily before the red liquid evanesced into the salty brine.

It swam like a squid, contracting and spreading out its tentacles. Those on Aiko's mecha remained as its body disappeared in the opaque waters. More tentacles shot up and then clasped around the leg of Aiko’s Kirie. Three of its tentacles were saw-like and hammered into the knee joint while it pulled with its might down into the murky water-filled portion of the room.
 
A grim smile played across William's lips as his weapons began to sing, playing a cacophonic funeral dirge for the NMX too indicationated or too stupid to surrender. He hadn't needed Hoshi's order to eliminate them. The ID-SOL had an almost animalistic instinct towards violence when it regarded the Mishhuvurthyar and their thralls. After all, he saw first hand the things they did to people.

So, he too, would show them what a monster looked like. With a roar, he launched forward towards one of the thralls that hadn't taken cover, driving his pile bunker spike, meant to penetrate tank armor, and fired it into the soldier. As he did so, his chain guns and plasma rifles continued to sing their funeral hymns. With a thought, he turned on his suit speakers. "If you don't want to die, you'd better drop to the floor and beg for your lives!" He roared at max volume.
 
The unseen essence of remaining level-headed in combat against monstrous alien abominations, as Ketsurui Aiko always did, wasn't that one shed all of their feeling or fear. Rather, the Princess' famous determination stemmed from the same impulses that clawed at any person when faced with unspeakable terror. But Aiko always reacted to those sensations as second nature. Her mind and body — well practiced in many worldly arts — were particularly honed for battle, and so she took necessary action without question.

A Kirie Thought Armor's Immersion System let Aiko experience the machine's body as if it were her own, save for the sensations of pleasure and pain. So the Mishhu's sawing, hammering appendage that assaulted the armor's leg was great cause for alarm. The swimming squid tugged at her while it attacked, trying to pull the anchored princess along even as it danced unimpeded beneath the water. Were Aiko wearing a Mindy today, she would have certainly felt the first blow. Instead, as the beast's second repeated strike came down, seeking to bite into the Kirie's joint with its barbed edge while holding the armor's calf with a tightly coiled tentacle, she jettisoned her robotic limb to save it from further damage.

Without something solid to hold onto any longer, the Mishhuvurthyar's next swing missed as the leg of Aiko's Kirie — and indeed the entire armor — was suddenly free to maneuver and dodge.

Thinking better of a protracted melee with a submerged Mishhu and having to battle both it and the trudging resistance offered by the water, Aiko aimed both of her shoulder-mounted weapons down at her wounded enemy. Both arms outstretched, too, began spewing automatic fire from the Thought Armor's wrist weapons. Aiko's two larger guns, one gauss and one aether, tracked the Mishhu's shadow on the heels of her aether pulse shots and then let fly with the calculated precision of a targeting system equivalent to that of an escort warship.

Again hit, the Mishhuvurthyar already maimed by her earlier slash (and more severely by Sif's spear) was lurched off of its gliding subsurface trajectory. For a moment or two, its immense speed maintained underwater but then obviously slowed just before it came to a stop against the wall and then floated unceremoniously to the surface.
 
Seeing the Neko technicians getting gunned down was a sharp sting in the heart. At this rate, only those that Molli had grabbed might be the lone survivors, and they were struggling against the only reason they're still able to. Taking the current situation into account, Sif thought the best move was to assist Molli, as she started to struggle with keeping her captives pinned. And was that a weapon?

In a measured charge, Sif arrived at Molli's side to slap the sidearm out of the Neko's hand before it could line up a good shot. It was going to be difficult to subdue all of them. Yet she had to try something. "Hear me now." She demanded, beaming a message into the minds of Molli's captives as Sif put a hand around around the neck of the one she disarmed. She used the NMX frequency that she had been using during her time as a grunt, as well as a general band to make sure they heard her.

In their heads they would see a projection of an NMX neko with a pale face and fiery red hair speaking to them, eyes censored with a veil of glitched distortions. "Our time is short. This base is lost. It is time to choose whether you will live to take your revenge, or serve as nutrition." She impressed upon the second choice her memory of a Mishu dumping drugged NMX soldiers down a chute, followed by a small pile of bodies at the base of the chute, which was then followed by a first-person account of what looked like rebelling NMX neko fighting to save one of their own from the grasp of an Advanced type.

"Out loud now. Yield, and you will have your chance at a new life or a time for revenge against this attack. Continue to struggle, and your bones will end up at the bottom of the sea, if not in your masters' maw."

"Choose quickly."
 
It was only then, perhaps, that the young neko registered what Hoshi had said. "Reactors" as in plural. Well then. "Fast but thorough, understood," she said, her mind racing to figure out just how to do that. Hopefully the Mishhu weren't terribly concerned about safety interlocks. Presumably they wouldn't have designed their systems with an eye to foreign invaders deliberately bypassing all the things to keep a reactor from going boom. And if not, well, surely she could find something to rig up. Just have to make it quick.

An aether reactor was an aether reactor. She was no power engineer, but she knew some basics, and happily, making something malfunction was a lot easier than making it function in the first place. Overloading the generators should be a matter of making it pull in more power than it was designed or capable of taking. Puzzling out the Mishhu controls would be the hardest part. "I can give you a five minute count, ma'am," she said to Hoshi, trying her best to push the noises and chaos of combat to the fringes of her attention, projecting confidence. Her fingers itched to grab her rifle and fire back, and she was peripherally aware that the rest of the group was fighting to protect her.

A little shrug of her shoulders as her fingers worked on the controls. If anything, she was determined not to let herself be distracted. They were counting on her and she wouldn't let them down if she could possibly help it.
 
Hoshi's order, to subdue or eliminate, was akin to a clarion call that brought clarity to Molli's actions. She was struggling to save NMX, people that would sooner gun her down than surrender. Did these brainwashed pawns of the Mishhu really deserve this degree of restraint? Did the squad of men and women who'd die for her deserve to be endangered by a reckless use of pacifistic force? No, the Nepleslian realized, and she'd prepared herself to tighten the claws on her kalamari arms and put an end to this threat for good.

That is, until Sif's timely intervention. She seemed to have a knack for always being there when Molli needed her the most. As her comrade put her gambit into action, Molli tried to contribute to the battle by firing off her shotgun in the direction of any Mishhu her comrades had already engaged, such as Asuka.
 
Those clasped by Molli had divisive reactions to the Nepleslian's right hand and her staggering, but genuine, visages. The way Sif had used her own experience was moving to some of those NMX Nekovalkyrja. Others, less so.

"I yield!" The voice came not from those being held aloft by Molli's kalamari arms but from a door that had opened somewhere underwater. Someone from inside the NMX base had entered the chamber. Her grey hair was drenched and plastered on her gaunt face as she surfaced. Water continued to spray onto her, running over her brows and into her deeply recessed eyes.

Straining against Molli, the NMX Neko gasped as they saw the NMX Overseer Charbon surface and yell out those two solitary words.

"Siste—"

The grey-haired NMX Nekovalkyrja didn't let the weapon-toting woman Molli held finish even a word. She had brought the muzzle of her Impaler rifle out of the water and let the blue particle beam do more than muzzle the other NMX. Charbon did the same to the second NMX that had been straining against the kalamari claw enough to bend the metal before taking a third shot into another NMX Nekovalkyrja. The three hung limply, now dead.

"Where is the Kaiyō captain?" Charbon said in her nasally accent as she looked about, mouth agape as she yelled and looked aimlessly between Mindy, Nepleslian Cyclops, then Kirie. "I believe it is time I surrender my cause to yours. I yield!" She repeated.

From her place tucked into a corner of the room, Hoshi nodded. To her team she said, "Cease fire on and release remaining NMX."

"Free them, leave them alive, and they are yours." Charbon pleaded at Aiko's Kirie, still unsure which of the Mindy held the captain, if any, and unaware that Hoshi had already made that same order.

"We'll take you alive," Hoshi said over speakers. "Find a way out. I..." Her mind went back to Urtullan and what Charbon had said about the Mishhuvurthyar and herself. Then to the NMX base when Hoshi had thought Charbon had been killed by one of her own and the guilt she felt.

"I trust you. Our ship will take you in above water," Hoshi said finally.

Molli's potshots at the sleuthing Mishhu did little at her distance and Hoshi didn't have a clear shot on it.

"Asu-aaghh," Hoshi groaned and then said into comms, "One remaining enemy. Give it all you've got and keep it off Uehara-hei! She's got a job to do!"
 
The teleport into partial amount of water caused Miori's senses to go haywire. The pure discombobulation caused her body to go on autopilot. Providing ineffective cover fire and generally not being much help. Fortunately her spinning mind finally refocused when the ceasefire was called. It was then she noticed the smell of her own vomit inside of her helmet. She then felt a lot of anger towards herself. This was because she had not practiced teleport operations and she would ensure that it would not happen again. With bleary eyes she surveilled the situation and noting Uehara needing aide quickly rushed over to provide cover.
 
Sif felt a welling rage upon seeing the careless execution of half of their perspective prisoners, or rescues, depending on how one saw the situation. It didn't even register that the overseer was a familiar one. The surviving captives saw one last flash of emotion from the transmission before it was stopped. A mix of rage, frustration and a heavy dose of sorrow for the fallen.

The show of execution lent no sympathy to the overseer. Sudden as it was, it showed ruthlessness expected from the higher rungs of command, and as hard as it was to swallow, Sif wouldn't not be able to say she expected any other course of action. "Captain, permission to escort the soldiers to safety," she asked over comms, her voice sounding strained.

She wanted to keep an eye on Charbon. She was amiable before, but the last time she disappeared she was reportedly shot dead. However she was more concerned for the safety of the other NMX for the moment.
 
Molli had an unpleasant view of the three executions from her position beneath the unlucky NMX, whose gore splattered onto the stunned Nepleslian's armor and left a horrific image of their moments burned into her mind. Immediately, Molli's shotgun swiveled to Charbon, her hands shaking as she contemplated pulling the trigger on the merciless woman until her magazine was empty. Molli didn't give a damn about taking a prisoner at the moment, not when the prisoner in question just betrayed their own so readily. Hoshi's intention was made very clear, and much as Molli wanted to defy her captain now more than ever, she lowered her weapon, as well as the NMX both alive and dead. The living were deposited onto the ground, while the dead Molli simply let fall to the ground. "Drop yer weapons!" Molli shouted to their captives, "Dunnae try'nythin'!"
 
Seeing Charbon sparked mixed emotions, however he didn't have time to dwell on it. There was still an Advanced to finish off. Turning towards the new threat, he drew his sword. The plasma rifles began to fire as he charged towards the enemy, stabbing out with his odachi.
 
Underwater Base

The smug air that clung to an NMX Neko like the acrid smell on a smoker's jacket met Molli's request. But even as they smiled coquettishly, the weapons were dropped into the water near their necks to sink below.

The Mishhuvurthyar left was sly and wrapped itself around a power bank for cover from William's charge. It wasn't enough to keep several of its tentacles from being lopped off by the veteran warrior, though. With other tentacles, it started inputting commands. As he did, Asuka could see on the interface panel nearest her that bulkheads were being closed throughout the base.

Hoshi said, "I'm going with you, Sif. Aiko-chusa is in command down here. Make sure the base is destroyed."

"With me," Hoshi said over speakers as she tucked her arm around the back and belly of one of the surrendering NMX and looked at Charbon expectantly. She anticipated Sif to do the same to the remaining NMX.

"We're taking on prisoners, some hostile." Boss called in to the away team from the Kaiyo itself. "Requesting backup above water."

"Sounds like we're going to need more than the two of us soon. Hurry with the detonation!" Hoshi relayed over comms as she plunged upwards through the geyser of water with a Neko under each arm.

Cove

Hoshi bobbed above water, hovering just enough out of it so that the NMX she had brought to the surface could bring. She looked towards the coastline of the sheltered bay where NMX Neko were spilling out of the base like droves of insects from an anthill. Some of them fired on the Kaiyō which had flown to meet Hoshi and Sif, but without the anti-starship artillery that William and Aiko had destroyed, it looked like there was not much that those on the ground could do to hurt the gunship. There were shadowy masses and Hoshi zoomed in on opticals to tag the Mishhuvurthyar present on the beach.

"For now, let's load them in," Hoshi said to Sif. The Kaiyō gunship kept a few dozen feet over the water. With the cargo bay ramp down, Lauren Strong and Koizumi Aratani were outfitted in personal armor and had pink jumpsuits tucked under their arms along with cuffs outstretched. Charbon took the manacles with a quiet grace that the other two NMX tried duplicate to such great efforts that their facsimile was clunky, but silent as they were sat down in the hold.

"We should have asked Molli up, at least," Hoshi said to Sif gravely as she looked out of the cargo bay at the shoreline. Then she looked back to her comrade and spoke with a more chipper tone. "Let's fly out to meet them, Sif-san. You lead the way. I'll speak to them but you and the Kaiyō will provide covering fire if they won't listen."
 
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Underwater Base

Thankfully, at least from Asuka's perspective, she was spared some of the more gorey sights. There were certainly enough of them, and listening to the sounds of battle, despite her attempts to focus on the task at hand. It didn't seem the base's builders had put a lot of stock in the notion of an inside threat. So much the worse for them.

She put the finishing touches on her masterpiece... no, she decided, more like a quick improv. It would do the trick, though... and given the urgency in Hoshi's voice, she mentally subtracted some of the safety margin she'd included to give them time to evacuate. "Detonation in three minutes... mark!" Her helmet HUD helpfully provided a 180 second countdown. As she put on the finishing touches, she noticed the closing bulkheads. Somehow she doubted it was for any purpose they would like. "They're sealing off the base corridors, not sure why," she said, even as she turned to see Miori coming to her side and unable to hold back a smile despite everything else.
 
Cove

Following Hoshi, Sif put her arms around the other two NMX, using the shaft of the spear as a bar for them to hang on to for extra support as the alternative would be to have her tail hold on to it and risk cutting one of them on the way out. "Take a deep breath, and hold on tight," she said firmly, yet with the softness of an older sister who just wanted her younger siblings to understand the importance of listening during a dire situation.

She counted down from three and carried the two NMX technicians out of the hole they had blasted through. Although she was completely protected from drowning while she was in her Mindy, Sif decided to hold her breath as well, as a way to gauge how much air the other two had in their own lungs. And she refused to breathe in until the two had their heads out of the water.

And once she saw the ship right above with the ramp open, she engaged her thrusters to bring the two to safety, leaving them in Aratani and Lauren's care. "Sit tight, they'll get you some dry clothes. No point in letting you get hypothermia."

Rejoining Hoshi, Sif took a breath and nodded to the plan. "Okay, I'll keep my shield up and spear down. But that Mishu you tagged might present us a problem. On your signal, Taisa." Once Hoshi was ready to go, Sif would head off to the beach, poised to take a few hits for her captain if necessary.
 
Underwater Base

"Molli, Miori, Wil," Aiko prompted the others. "Keep at this one," she encouraged. "The way it clings to anything in reach shows its desperation."

The princess, too, remained in the fight while Asuka finished up preparing her explosives package. Her great red power armor waded effortlessly though the sea that had now permeated this chamber, and she joined William's assault from a flanking direction. With her left-hand aether blade activated, she reached in with her right and pried a few tentacles from the power bank the Mishhuvurthyar had wrapped itself around, then drawing the energy sword through as many of the alien's appendages as she could.

Aiko continued to slash and wrestle at the final beastly baddie even as Asuka's report about the bulkhead shutters closing chirped over squad comms. Her performance was nothing fancy here, for the battle was five of them against one, and so she was focused primarily on pummeling the Advanced Type until it stopped messing with consoles and controls.

"Three minutes?" she wondered mid-fight. "That will leave us ample time to reverse whatever he has done. We must end him rightly, then, and quickly."
 
Molli was relieved when the captives were finally out of her tentacles and out of sight, even as the sea threatened to drown the chamber after all of their fighting. Powered servos picked up the slack from the Nepleslian's tired limbs as she cut through the water in a single bound and joined Aiko in driving her blade at the Mishhu's sensitive eyes. Molli's technique wasn't fanciful, more akin to savage chopping than graceful or skilled swordsmanship. She didn't have the energy to do much more than draw breath and release, she just wanted to kill this thing and get out. Not even their very limited time seemed to bother her.
 
Underwater Base

Three swords were more than enough to beat down the already wounded Mishhuvurthyar. Whatever willpower that had helped it abscond behind the power bank to the console it died at was diminished and the light left the small handful of eyes that remained intact. It bobbed on the surface of the water, pushed against the ceiling of the chamber as it was completely filled.

Before dying, it had closed half of the base's bulkheads. Though Asuka's efforts would surely cause a dent in Mishhuvurthyar base, it wouldn't lead to total destruction like the other above ground bases. Those had been smaller and less important caches compared to this one, too.

Cove

"Many of your kind have chosen a different way of life," Hoshi said over booming speakers from the greatest distance she could maintain from the group while still being heard. She had been able to approach with arms raised as if surrendering, but that facade would only keep gunfire off of her for so long. Metaphorically pulling at her collar, she tried to construe some semblance of what Aiko would say.

"Many of them know they deserve better! There is a place for you under Yamatai's protection! I've heard—witnessed—Mishhuvurthyar Warlords decrying the endless war waged. Lay down arms—agh!" The captain avoided the weapons fire opened on her by the Advanced Type specifically. She had identified fifteen NMX Neko that had already begun to drop their weaponry, some even taking steps towards her.

"Hold their attention! I'm going in to rescue them!" Hoshi squirreled the marks of the identified NMX away to Sif.

She was already going in. Plasma rifles shot out at her Mindy like harpoons trying to strike a tough-skinned whale.
 
Underwater Base

The final Advanced Type's effort to cordon off its base was clear even from a quick glance at the volumetric display it had been using. A linguistics expert or Mishhuvurthyar specialist was not required to see what the desperate alien had done. But reversing it was another thing entirely. Aiko recognized some Mishhuvurthyar words, slashed in ugly orange pixels on the interface screen, but not enough to make up or down of the controls in the two-and-three-quarters minutes they had before Asuka's explosives went off.

"Undo it, Wil," the princess said straightaway. Her old ID-SOL friend had proven his hacking ability time and time again, against both Kikyo Sector computer systems and enemy networks, so Aiko trusted he could open everything back up again here. "The rest of you must exit now and rendezvous with Hoshi-taisa on the surface. Go back the way we entered. I will remain to cover Captain Sanders and then both of us will be on your heels thereafter."
 
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