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Bishop fumes as he stares out into the torrential, monsoon-like downpour. The landscape is enshrouded in vast sheets of rain wherever the eye can see, and there's no way he'll be able to spot his target in this gunk. His team of Zakus slowly maneuvers through the thick jungle, seeking their prey, the massive green behemoths trampling small trees beneath them and pushing larger ones aside. "Unit 3, pick it up a little! You're still lagging... I know you can do better, after all, I am." He sniggers as he hassles the most inexperienced pilot in his unit again. Ah, being in the SS is such a joy sometimes... Sitting up suddenly, he hears a radio transmission coming in. "...Night to Kratos... sir, enemy target located. Will engage immediately, suggest you close in and provide support, you arn't going to be able to do anything from where you are in this weather!" Bishop's eyebrow raises, annoyed at the overly familiar attitude this 'Night' person is displaying towards him... but, the man is a more experienced soldier than he, whether he'd like to admit it or not, and the mission -is- to attack the Earth Federation mobile suit, after all. Aligning his mobile suit with the direction of the transmission, he keys his radio to direct the Zaku team to follow him... and to heckle the unfortunate pilot of Unit 3 again. Emmanuel's lips tighten as he grips the controls of the Blue Destiny, peering back and forth through the foilage. A short time ago, a grenade had popped out of nowhere and exploded near his mobile suit, damaging the left leg and chest slightly, though not enough to seriously impair his combat ability. He's certain there's at least one Zeon unit in the area, and the constant rain is making his wait more than a little nerve-racking. He has the external microphones turned up quite a bit, hoping to catch signs of the enemy... and indeed, this works. Hearing a log crack behind his mobile suit as the threat indicator suddenly lights up, he curses, frantically stomping on pedals to spin his mobile suit around... to recieve a shuddering impact against his mobile suit's left arm as a heat hawk crashes into it, right above the shield. The blow does some damage to the actuators, but doesn't sever the arm, luckily for him. "Shit!" As the Zaku raises it's heat hawk for a second swing, Emmanuel lifts his machinegun with desperate speed and presses it against the Zaku's torso, pulling the trigger and sending a dozen rounds into the moble suit. The Zaku staggers backwards, crashing to the ground, and begins to burn, the still-glowing heat hawk igniting a tree, which also burns, sullenly, and casting a dim red glare across the scene. "Right... that can't be the only one. Let's see... damage control..." Emmanuel frowns as the status indicators show that several important power cables have been severed; the left arm will still work, but at rather reduced capacity. A burst of machinegun fire explodes out of the underbrush, slamming into his mobile suit's chest, sparks twinkling off of the frame as the tough luna titanium armor absorbs the punishment, and cursing, Emmanuel returns fire as he blazes away with both his 100mm and the twin 75s built into the chest, spraying blindly as he hastily hops backwards. The barrage continues, however, and worse, a cracker grenade is next, though he manages to hop away as it detonates, blowing a large divot out of the surrounding jungle. Hastily engaging his thrusters, the Blue Destiny rises, and reveals the Zaku lying prone below. It tracks him, sending more rounds at him, and he frowns as one of his missile launchers takes a hit, but fires the other one, which slams into the Zaku's backpack, quite effectively trashing it. As he slowly lowers the BD back towards the ground, something long and thin suddenly whips out of the canopy and around his mobile suit's leg, and a split second later, a massive electrical discharge roars through his mobile suit even as he frantically reaches for a beam saber. "EXAM System Activate... come on...!" Marion, however, seems content to sit this one out, and his thrusters cut out as the GM vanishes into the underbrush, flailing about it with it's beam saber a bit as it does so... A short time later, Edward's Gouf emerges from the canopy, less an arm and with several holes in it's chest and thighs. Behind it, the prone form of the Blue Destiny can be seen, a heat saber pinning it to the ground like a butterfly. Emmanuel Salazar: 6 VP gained, 4 days damage Edward Night: 8 VP gained, 2 days damage Bishop Kratos: 4 VP gained, No damage Surrounded in a loose arena of cheering soldiers and mobile suits, Jennifer's Gouf and Eugene's Zaku lunge towards each other, both suits using their thrusters to increase the speed of their swings. Heat sword clashes against heat hawk, the two mobile suits pushing against each other and attempting to overbear one another, before pulling back, each dealing and parrying three fast blows simultaneously before they break apart and enter a complicated dance of steel against steel. The two mobile suits are evenly matched: Jennifer has the tougher and better equipped mobile suit, but Eugene is slightly more skilled. Neither can get a decent advantage over the other, and as Jennifer swings her heat sword in a massive uppercut, Eugene engages his thrusters, vaulting his Zaku into the sky fast enough to escape the swing. Compressing her lips, Jennifer engages her mobile suit's thrusters as well, roaring up towards the green form silhouetted against the sun. Even though she's normally fairly cool in battle, there's just something about this that stirs her blood, a little more than the usual fighting against the Federation. This guy's good... really good. As her Gouf passes the Zaku, she slams her heat sword downwards, then engages her thrusters, Eugene parrying as the two superheated melee weapons clash again, both mobile suits falling away from one another and landing about twenty meters away from each other, then lunging forwards once more, engaging in a series of passing strikes against each other. The spikes on the left shoulder of Jennifer's Gouf shear away, and a shallow slash appears on the side of Eugene's Zaku. Both mobile suits skid to a halt, turning to face each other again, and the excitement of the crowd rackets up another notch, glad to see such a display of skill after weeks of patrol duty. "Go, Morales! Get him!" "Don't lose, Rice! Kick that SS bitch's ass!" Both mobile suits run towards each other, slamming into each other's chests and shaking Jennifer and Eugene in their cockpits. The two machines strain, each having grabbed the arm of the other to prevent a finishing blow, and it breaks up as Jennifer suddenly smashes her Gouf's chest forwards, sending Eugene skidding backwards. "Like that will work on me...!" Jennifer whips her heat wire out with blinding speed, but Eugene manages to knock it aside as he nails the tip perfectly with his heat hawk, the Gouf rapidly retracting it and then flinging it forth once more. This time, however, Eugene flings his heat hawk, which twirls through the air with a blur, grinding along the heat wire until it breaks through, slamming into the head of the Gouf with an echoing crash that knocks it back slightly from the force of the blow. "Shit!" Jennifer doesn't even bother trying to pull up the backup cameras-- she can hear the sounds of thrusters engaging, and she takes a guess, floors the controls, and slices outwards with her heat sword. The head of Eugene's Zaku flies free as his mobile suit slams into Jennifer's Gouf with a boost-assisted shoulder charge, throwing her forwards against her restrains as she bangs her head on the console in front of her, her Gouf tumbling to the ground with a large dent in it's torso. "Not yet...!" Pressing the stump of the heat wire against Eugene's torso, she engages the electricity. Without a full contact, the current that's delivered is minimal, but it's enough to freeze Eugene's Zaku for a second as her backup cameras kick in, firing her thrusters and slipping from beneath the Zaku as it starts to rise to it's knees. "YAAAAAAH!" Snatching the heat hawk from where it's embedded in her Gouf's head, Jennifer swings the blunt side against the chest of Eugene's Zaku as hard as she can, the impact seeming to shake the entire arena as the arm of her Gouf deforms from the force of the blow. The Zaku actually goes briefly airborne, seeming to hang in the sky for a second before slamming into the ground and digging a furrow as it slides across the dirt... and doesn't get up. Breathing hard, Jennifer opens her hatch. "...I did it..." Jennifer: 5 VP gained, 2-1 days damage Eugene: 3 VP gained, 2-1 days damage Mare's Leg, a C-88 type Medea transport flew high above the Alps, escorted on either side by Virgil Hilts in his new Jet Core Booster fighter-bomber and his TIN Cod wingman. Below, a second flight was visible, their targets. "Okay, I've got the big one, you guys handle the little ones," the Federal pilot spoke, not bothering to wait for any reply before sending his new craft into a steep dive. The new craft was so much more responsive than his Fly Manta, it almost made him giddy. Behind him, the TIN Cod matched his superior's dive while the C-88 openned it's cargo doors, a tan GM sliding feet first into the cold air. Inside the Apsalus, Mujib continued to run through routine tests, taking notes on performance via voice recorder. One of his Dopp escorts voices crackled through over the radio, interupting his comments about the response of the Minovsky craft generator. "Sir, we have two Federal aircraft on intercept course, how should we respond?" "We'll just switch to a combat test, let's give them the appropriate greeting." the Zeon test pilot replied. The two Dopps began to ascend swiftly, moving for a head-on pass through the two Federal craft. Mujib's mobile armor, capable of much greater degree of movement, took a much more severe angle to meet the Federal attack, ascending at a nearly perfect vertical rise. "Alright you Zeon bastards, show me what you've got," Hilts commented as he saw the Zeons move to attack. He made to correct his descent to give him a firing angle on one of the Dopps, but found the Jet Core Booster responding much more severely than his Fly Manta would have, overshooting his target by a wide angle before he could regain complete control. "Damn! This baby is wild!" The adrenaline junkie pilot made a wide sweeping turn back toward the Dopps when a burst of vulcan fire forces him to reverse his course. The Apsalus had come down behind him and was now chasing him. Above, the two Dopps had his TIN Cod wingman outnumbered, the Federal craft unable to outmanuver the Zeon fighters. A flurry of mini-missiles from the lead Dopp downed his wingman in an orange explosion. Before he could even begin to curse, the Jet Core Booster jerked violently, losing altitude quickly. Inside the Apsalus, Shahryar could only frown, having been unable to ram anything with his mobile armor during the sortie. Far below, the GM G finally set foot on the ground just in time to see Hilts' craft perform an emergency landing in a valley several miles away. Sighing, the pilot began the trek toward his downed commander. Virgil Hilts: 6 VP gained, 2 days damage Mujib Mohammed Shahryar: No damage, 8 VP gained |