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RP: YSS Kaiyō Mission 36: Mizu no Iro

Asuka's suit had stopped screaming at her. A part of her was depressingly aware that it had given up alarming because it simply couldn't anymore. Just when it was starting to be fun...

Fun seemed to be over. What remaining, weakly flickering displays and telltales told her the borrowed NMX hardware would play no further action in this or any future battles. Her momentum could only carry her so far; the gravity of the planet below had the final say, and she could already trace her trajectory heeling over in a graceful parabola, back toward the ocean she'd managed not to pay too much attention to during the battle.

At least I got the job done, she reflected, casting her eyes back up toward the gap, now open to be exploited. A single moment; space battles really were beautiful in the abstract, when you could simply spectate and were apart from the life and death struggle. Then she squared her shoulders. Life and death struggles were literally what she was made for, the battle wasn't over yet, and rolling over and dying was literally unthinkable. "Mayday, mayday, anyone can hear me?" Her Reaper's comms seemed completely gone, as far as she could tell, but she tried anyway, because there was nothing left to try. The temptation to send a telepathic cry for help was strong, but she held back for now, fearful of being heard by the wrong mind. Glancing at the ocean below, she made a quick estimate of how much time she had.
 
Erika returned William's lazy salute then returned to the hull of the crumbling Mordrakka. She lifted her wrist over the torpedo in her other hand and interfaced with its guidance computer. She already had command codes from William's effort aboard, so bypassing the security was a matter of putting in the password. Then she locked in one of the Revengers before tossing it up, away from the Mordrakka.

The missiles RCS systems ignited first, a hiss of gas to orient the weapon in the correct direction before its engines lit up, and it left a streak across the sky as it flew towards its target. Erika kept the link active, guiding the torpedo in as it burned onward. The Revenger was a smaller target than the torpedo was designed for, so the additional targeting telemetry would help.
 
The sudden teleportation into crushing depths was unexpected, dire and immediately felt as her armor began crumpling, but Sif remained focused. Little did the NMX know that this only made it worse for themselves. 'You seek to bring death to Her own Herald,' she would message the enemy to intimidate and to shift her own focus. For now she wasn't a soldier, but a Grim Reaper. Whatever the outcome for herself may be, Sif was not letting the Revenger escape.

In many novels, a berserker mauls and maims the enemy, often at the expense of their bodies as their strength is multiplied by rage and pain. While the armor still held, Sif intended to channel that aspect, disregarding self preservation, she wrapped her legs around the enemy armor's waist. One leg around, tucked and locked behind the knee of the other. She was going to crush the Revenger herself. As she does this, she shut off her senses to pain, yet kept the other sensations so she would be aware if she had lost any limbs, or if one of them were inoperable.

While she wasn't sure if it was possible to properly interface with her armor, she would nonetheless try to override the safeties and coded limits, increase power output, divert it to the servos, make this armor an iron maiden. Life or death, she was going to make sure her armor wasn't going to let go without the Revenger having to be pried free with heavy machinery. In addition to her leg lock, Sif would attempt to choke the Revenger with both hands, as tightly as the armor could go, not just to cut off the oxygen or blood flow, but to outright crush the armor, break its seal at the very least. 'Do you intend to die beneath the waves?' she would question the Revenger, 'Because I do, and you are coming with me. You will die in Death's embrace. You will die in my arms! But only one of us will be remembered.'
 
NSS Fang

"Captain, we have incoming!" The sensor operator reported. On the plot, Captain Adler saw enemy ships chasing after the two Yamatian Fuji class vessels. "Helm bring us about! We'll have to leave the Kaiyo to play fly swatter, we have some unwanted guests to the party. Tactical, give them a taste of the big guns."

The Fang moved out, vectoring towards the incoming threats. Flying between the Kaiyo and her sister ship, the mass drivers began to fire. The ship shuddered slightly as the 6 cannons unleashed their salvo. With the cannons firing, the tactical officer also plotted firing solutions for the missiles and torpedos. At Adler's command, the Fang unleashed a massive barrage of ordinance. The plot was covered in inverted green carrot icons as they raced towards the enemy ships.

Valkyrie Flight continued to fly close air support for Hoshi, firing on anything that tried to get close. Missiles flew from their wing pylons, and their noses were illuminated with cannon fire.
 
"That is my sister, Soleil! My batch sister!" Charbon's nasally tone jumped into Aiko's comms. "She is a higher ranked officer than me and the NMX Nekovalkryja pilot you took down and killed on Rabaal. That said, she will be re-sleeved if you kill her again. You must take her as a prisoner if you want to make an impact while fighting her!” The former NMX was suddenly indifferent to retaking Hoshi on the whale. Instead, she had honed in on the underwater armor.

The NMX pilot proved their patience underwater. Air bubbled out of the Revenger where the armor puckered. The Revenger locked on to the little spheres of air with its shoulder-mounted gattling guns seconds before they were crushed further by Sif's willful last stand. Clamped down tight around the Revenger, Sif's Reaper crumpled into her, shriveling around her extremities and then her organs. Her downgraded strength meant she was struggling to move the heavy armor she wore as the power systems were rended and it lost propulsion. Her hemosynth stores in her spleen had already flooded her blood, trying to repair what they could.

But her Nekovalyrja body could only handle so much crushing power for so long—and Sif had already outlived that limit by seconds. All the while the Revenger's pilot, Soleil, thrashed at her. Unable to uncouple, she did the nest best thing to getting Sif off of her by force.

Water shot up out of the sea before the armors jettisoning up from the depths did. Sif 's Reaper was like a ragdoll on the armor that Charbon had designated as her kin—or as close as kin as created Neko could get— which pulled its aether rifle far from its own body and shot into the armor on its shoulders. Any question whether Sif was alive or dead on the armor was quickly answered where a hole in the fabric of space had been torn in the area where water met air on Kokoro. The inky red mark was like the blood splatter from where Sif had been killed. The Reaper tumbled from the now-airborne armor as Soleil assessed the fight.

Having been re-programmed by Erika, a torpedo went out autonomously, whipping around the battle until it found a Revenger. The torpedo made impact. Meant for a starship, not a sole heavy armor, the torpedo turned the armor into a plume of smoke and debris. It was very much unlike Molli's forearm plasma cannons which slid off of the Revenger's chin like water down a drain. Its shield stuttered at the end of Molli's emptying, though, as if its upper limit had been seen, if not cracked as it kept a grip on its sword, unwilling to give up such a powerful tool.

"Chusa Kitsurugi, you cannot fathom the amount of information that sole Neko knows about your enemy.” Charbon pleaded after seeing Soleil's marker appear above water alongside Sif's. Having donned a Reaper herself, Charbon was far from the dogfights now happening. Aiko was on their fringes, though, ready to clash into either of the Revenger armors.

Detecting the approaching NMX armor that Kitsurugi Aiko donned and the flight of armored NMX Nekovalkryja behind her, the Revenger's blindingly white helmet snapped to the Princess' position. Red trails streamed from its many little eyes that pockmarked the forehead of the helmet. In a latent arc upwards, the red glow trailed as if into Kenichi's Star. In a swan-dive arc, she was flying towards the whales, preparing to re-capture the Kaiyō captain as her team had done before. Her aether rifle shot out at the Valkryrie flight.

Meanwhile, the object of Hoshi's attempt at freedom had absconded and her last remaining energy was spent running towards arms that were no longer open and able to catch her. The whale ascended with her further, no longer actively harming her, though. Valkyrie flight had competition to get in close, though, as the NMX pushed against them in order to let Soleil in the Revenger push through the gap they had created, much like the one Uehara Asuka had meticulously created in the NMX fleet defenses.

The Rikugun red panel had accomplished her part in the mission, able to make a path that the Kaiyo team would soon use to abscond with Hoshi... if they got Hoshi. Their mission was looking more dire as one after another died. Unlike Sif, nobody had eyes on Asuka. Nobody heard her pleas. Her armor simply hit the water and sunk her down like rocks tied in her waistcoat. Beneath the waves, her signature fell.
 
Molli's breathing labored under her efforts to wrest that aether blade free of the NMX soldier unwilling to give it up, her superior NMX strength a mere match for the like-bodied woman piloting armor that was far superior to Molli's own. All the while, she could sense Hoshi's leap and subsequent plummet into the ocean below, and realized that there were more important things at stake than eliminating every threat in the vicinity. For as much as Molli believed Sif was capable of resurfacing in time to catch their captain, she knew it was unwise to foist all responsibility to her comrade. That was when Molli made the split-second decision to fold her legs up and send both feet rocketing into the chest of her adversary, which she used to fly backwards in the opposite direction, towards the sea. Spinning around, Molli locked eyes on Hoshi, then barreled straight for her. She aimed to snatch her tiny captain up in both arms.

At the same time, Molli could hear the crackle of a teleportation unit, and as she swiveled to catch sight of what she assumed would be Sif, she was met with the bone-chilling view of Sif's armor, limp as a doll, flying off in a flurry of aether fire.

"No. No. No. Sif? You can't be-" The silence was enough to silence Molli's desperate, fearful mind from continuing to reach out for her dearest friend. Sif was gone, and there was nothing she could do about that. Molli knew she couldn't let herself be rattled by what was always going to happen at some point, but she made sure to let that Revenger's appearance burn itself into her memory before turning back towards her dive to Hoshi. No matter what it took, Molli swore she'd tear that NMX's head off in Sif's honor.
 
Erika watched with satisfaction as her torpedo hit its mark, vaporising one of the Revengers. She was still a ways from the fighting, and what she saw from her vantage looked like pure chaos.

She watched Sif's go silent, and the grin on her face flattened. Her enhanced vision tracked upward, finding the inky red tear hanging in the air where sea met sky; the unmistakable signature of an aether round at close range. Below it, she saw a trail of smoking debris.

Then she noticed she couldn't find Asuka either. No transponder. No signal at all. She rolled back the telemetry, chasing the last moment of Asuka's broadcast; and found it ending at the waterline.

She looked back up at the Revengers for one moment, and decided she was too far away to make a play for Hoshi, so she darted down towards the water, where the last transmission from Asuka's transponder was detected.

"Concentrate fire on their optics and sensors." She said over the wireless as she descended "If your weapons aren't sufficent for a kill, degrade."

The Ravager still felt clumsy, and her resentment for the suit increased as she considered she could solve the issue of intercepting Hoshi immediately if she had control over a Mindy's internal teleporter.
 
Warnings flashed in her mind as her body gave out. The armor flooded with ice cold temperatures from cracks and other weak points. With the sensation of pain suppressed, she could instead feel, as the pressure began to equalize, with great clarity, the sudden loss of hearing. There was a pop in her eardrums and the sound of her creaking armor suddenly stopped. Then came the feeling of her chest caving inwards, expelling the air from her lungs. She dared not imagine the pain of such a collapse. Then when the water filled what space it could, her skin began to feel tighter as the pressure attempted to compress her body as much as physics would allow.

Everything felt numb. Whether it was the cold or the extreme pressure causing it, she could hardly feel her fingers. Was she even still applying pressure, or had the armor's servos also failed to the point where the Revenger could easily pry her off? No, it was still struggling, at least for now, frustratingly enough. This armor was hard to crack, not that her weakened state had helped with the situation.

'So this is what awaits for us at the end, she mused to herself, vision fading system after system failed. 'It's just like falling asleep. Floating aimlessly in the void. No sound. No light. Nothing to feel. It's almost peaceful...'

======

Automated systems uploaded Sif's latest backup to a new body, setting a new milestone for the neko. It wasn't the second or third time Sif woke up in the tube, but it was the first where a significant amount of time had passed, with no memories of why she was in there. A little disorienting, but telling at the same time. She had died.

Floating in the void as systems were reconstructed, she was left to wonder how she ended up dying. She felt a little embarrassed, and a little disappointed. There she was, back from advanced training, only to die on her first mission. How was she going to face the crew at this point. If she had control of her body right now, she'd have hid in her room for a good few hours. Then her thoughts would shift to the crew once she stopped bemoaning being re-sleeved. Were they all right? She could only hope there were no occupied tubes next to her. Suppose she'll learn of their fates, along with her own once she was out of there.

'Old Sif, you better have died doing something we can write about,' she would tell the spirit of her past self.
 
NSS Fang

Mass driver rounds began punching into the NMX ships, chunks of chitin, tissue, and atmosphere venting into space until they were able to seal themselves back up. With the first successful salvo, the enemy started an evasive pattern as they tried to close in. NMX point defense started trying to swat down the Fang's missiles but they too began running their own evasive patterns, before the sub munitions. The mini missiles streaked through the space between overwhelming the point defenses and delivering their payloads. "Solid hit on target, but they are still coming." The sensor operator reported. "Keep firing tactical, I don't want anything left!" Adler ordered. Her ship shuddered once more as the mass drivers propelled their ordiance at high velocity into the black.

The Valkyrie's were having a difficult time of keeping the Mishhuvurthyar PAs away from Hoshi, for everyone they killed two more would take their place. "Boss they just keep coming!" Nomad complained. "Just keep firing!" Valkyrie 1 replied. Just then a squad of ID-SOLs in Void armor began dropping, having deployed just before the Fang left orbit. "Berserker 1-1 to Valkyrie 1. Figured you could use a hand!" Came the voice of Master Sergeant Sokolov. The Voids began circling Hoshi, adding their fire to the fusillade.
 
Impact came as a shock, for all that Asuka had expected it. She certainly had enough time during her fall to see the surface of the ocean coming and measure the timing of splash to the millisecond, despite all her attempts to avoid it. She could manage some antigravity tricks, but overcoming terminal velocity was a bit much, even if she didn't have a complete and frustratingly nonfunctional NMX armor suit wrapping her up.

Then she sank. Buoyancy was just a dream, and she quickly began to fumble at her suit, in a last ditch effort to simply doff it. She doubted survival for long was likely if she braved the waters without even failing armor as protection, but she knew her chances of surviving if she rod the suit down to the bottom were zero. She would just have to take her chances suitless... assuming she could even get out of it with no power to aid in the task. She'd drilled in doing it in Yamatai armor during escape and evasion training, but that wasn't in an already damaged enemy suit. Still, she would try; otherwise she knew what awaited her.
 
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