It was his fault.

Like a record stuck on repeat, that phrase alone reverberated in his mind to no foreseeable end. In reality, he only shared a portion of the blame, as it was divided evenly among every member in the cohesive unit. That was the point of a team. If somebody fucked up, then by this theorem, they all had fucked up. But it wasn’t this unspoken rule of thumb that currently plagued the young adult’s conscience. It was more personal, emotional really, something that a soldier is always told not to fall victim to, but is seemingly always susceptible to. So when four lives had fallen over the course of losing tides, the feeling was more than numbing. His bunkmate, Darren “Thorn” Yinyues, as much a close friend as he was a valiant soldier, had as the guy would always put it, “Kicked the can.” Yet when Erwin “Halcyon” Freund attempted to equate death to such a scant arrangement of words, he just couldn’t find it in him to do that much. The other three had been quite dear to the twenty year old as well, especially when he was assigned to 3rd MAS at such an unripe age. They were good people, unyielding when all hope seemed lost. They would very much rather go on fighting than cower behind an aimlessly floating rock in space.

And Erwin would do just that.

Breaking free of his momentary muse, he processed the familiar voices fed directly into his ears and digested the information they carried. With a quick glance over to one of the holographic screens to his left, he confirmed that stealth drive was still operating in optimal condition, despite the extensive usage it’s seen throughout this battle. The Zeitgeist was currently hiding behind an asteroid large enough to conceal the MAS’s entire profile. With its back to the gray matter, the mech cautiously made a one-eighty and gripped tightly to lift its head just over the smoothened edge. All at once, his HUD exploded with data, courtesy of Web. The formation of eight Ferir II’s, each of which had now been bracketed and analyzed to a proficient length, were now on a direct course for the 3rd. On top of that, they were completely unaware of the team’s skill and the MAS that lied in wait to their side. Numbers declined at an exponential rate as the Coalition forces progressed closer and closer to the blockade that is the 3rd squadron. 

The veteran longarm, Web, was the first to sink teeth into the enemy units. The young adult winced at the far off explosion that took up a sizable amount of his frontal display. He calmly watched as the ruby brackets that bordered the Ferir II dulled to black, a lucid sign that the target had been dealt with. The unaccounted attack propagated disorder in the assailing element, or more likely, they were responding to the wakeup call, the revelation that they were dealing with more than competent opponents. 

[color=#F0FFF0][i]Give them hell.[/i][/color] The pilot cursed mentally as he took a step out of his kind-hearted character. With the Ferirs now veering off in separate directions, it was time for Erwin to draw enemy attention away from his comrade and give the Coalition another variable to deal with. With a deft press to the control board that rested at level with his stomach, the MAS’s power consumption gradually raised in the shift from stagnant to attack mode. Out of the corner of his right eye, the pilot noted the array of info and graphs that filled another screen, all practically simplified the routine processes of the Zeitgeist’s systems. His frontal display fixated on the closest Ferir, which appeared to have been in the midst of executing a flank on his team. Thus, it had split off from the pack, acting as it would prove to be a pivotal asset to the turnout of the skirmish. Unfortunately, the Coalition pilot maneuvering the MAS thought wrong.

[color=#F0FFF0]”T-This is Halcyon! Going specter!”[/color] A childish voice well behind a few years of its age managed to announce over the battlenet, despite the distinct stammering and angst that riddled it. Just before he gave the asteroid a little bit of elbow grease, Erwin reached for one of the switches before him. A faint hum he had grown accustomed to worked its way into his ears, meanwhile a clock counting down popped up in the upper-left corner of his HUD. At the moment, the Light MAS operator had approximately six minutes before the active camouflage generator would begin to churn through his remaining power like crazy. Another holographic screen popped up to his side to display the heat emissions given off by the drive.

The Zeitgeist banked to the side as it pushed off from the asteroid as lightly as possible for a thirty foot tall machine of metal. The MAS’s right arm readied the ZEN-SMG “Splinter” now freed from its thigh’s mag-lock. Erwin tossed his gaze to the ammo counter, which caused him to uneasily shift in his seat at the remainder of his ammunition. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the Zeitgeist’s control stick and eased it forward, sending the mech barreling towards the flanking Coalition unit. Before the enemy pilot could react to the sudden increase in heat the Ferir’s sensors surely detected, a dagger drawn mid-flight wedged its way between the swivelled head and the main body. Erwin gritted his teeth as he burrowed the blade deeper into the far bulkier mech. With the distance now closed and his opponent ensnared, the pilot made sure to stay out of the Ferir’s reach and line of fire, which was now blindly shooting in hopes that the shells would somehow whizz around and save the mech. The Zeitgeist’s free hand raised the Splinter and aimed its barrel into the cleft that the Acheron had created. Erwin held his breath while he squeezed the trigger five times, sending a two-round burst with each pull directly into the chassis.

The now visible Zeitgeist managed to kick off the lifeless casket just before another Ferir sent a volley of rounds Erwin's way. He veered hard to the side and pulled off from the open space, evading rounds as he raced his way back to his group. [color=#F0FFF0]”Got one on my six, leading him y’all’s- wah, I mean your way!”[/color] The young adult cried into the battlenet at the fact that his dialect had accidentally surfaced, all the while he nonchalantly weaved his way around oncoming fire from his aft, in spite of the state of embarrassment he was in. During his strafe, Erwin fired two more bursts in the general direction of the other Ferirs, sending four streaks of yellow light into space. If it wasn’t for the high speed the Zeitgeist sported, he would have surely been torn to mince meat at this juncture. The MAS flew back towards friendly forces with an enemy still in tow.