---

Incubus had been thorough and brutal. There wasn't much resistance left for him to deal with as he made his way to regroup with the Decoy Squad.

Finally, after a slightly longer walk than anticipated, he made it to the battered hangar where the Decoy Team had planned to hit. He noticed two very important things. One, the fighting was already over when he arrived. Two, there were more people there than there should have been. He quickly recognized his fellow crew and the child soldiers... but then also a mountain of a man, some girl, and-

BOOM!

-and a sudden... meteor impact? No, actually it reminded him more of how he had entered the battlefield.

'What the hell, I just did that less than an hour ago and already I got copycats?' he mused to himself while he scanned the situation. He quickly split the visual feed on his HUD, having the Belial zoom in on the impact site while he focused on the group before him.

He also realized he should probably let John and Rachel know it was him since, now that he thought about it, he hadn't shown them his armor before the mission started...

"Well howdy boys and girls, I see you made a right mess o' things without me," he greeted them, stomping on over. His accent no doubt made his identity clear, electronically distorted by the armor or not. But who were these newcomers and why hadn't they been shot? And why did the big guy's outfit give him the nastiest deja vu, like he'd just seen something similar- "OH SON OF A-" His cannon immediately locked on. Of course, he was another member of Incubus. He had to be. At that same time, the dust in the distance cleared enough for him to make out a large mech-suit, even taller than the Belial. 'The hell...? Not Incubus, but-'

And then the whole ship started blaring alarms. He recalled the lights flickering a bit on his way through. 'That thing got loose didn't it...' He recalled the warning signs he'd seen before he'd run into Snow and the first Incubus merc.

"I swear if one more thing happens, I'm gonna lose it!" Kelan growled. "But first order of business... why aren't we shootin' him?!" Kelan pointed at Rook... though the finger on his busted arm didn't extend. "Because I just ran into one o' his friends and suffice it t' say we didn't sit down for coffee and biscuits!"

Meanwhile the mech in the distance broadcast some sort of code. In hindsight, he probably should have kept track of Moonstrike's codes. He'd normally have just radio'd Natasha to ask, but somebody had jammed the comms! Likely Incubus, which was just another reason that he really just wanted to shoot this guy!

“You talk too much. Our ancestors came up with a nice, simple word for these occasions, it’s the word ‘no’.” she rolled her eyes at Rook’s response just in time to see something in the sky. A dot at first, but quickly getting bigger and bigger. Soon the dot had arms, legs, thrusters...

As if this couldn’t get any worse. It almost sounded like the start of a bad joke. ‘Two former child soldiers, a giant, a merc and a battlemech meet outside a prison ship...’. “Ye’ve gotta be takin’ the piss here!” she groaned somewhere between frustrated rage and utter terror, hastily repositioning to put something between herself and the third newcomer. As if it would be of any help against that mountain of metal and death. Somehow she doubted her telekinesis would be enough here. And she thought things have gone out of her league before. At this rate, the entire Ascendancy Fleet would show up in the next five minutes.

Fortunately, this one seemed to be a fan of poetry as well. If poetry meant a friendly, then there was now a good chance they might make it out alive even if Tiny decided to do something stupid. On the condition that this bright red beast could fit into the ship’s corridors. “Nice entrance.” She regained some of her composure and stepped out from her cover. “Did you rehearse that, or is that just the way you roll?”

The appearance of yet another armored suit, this one somewhere in between Rook and the Red Baron, made her seriously doubt the life choices she’s made over the previous year. It was only when the suit’s occupant spoke did she breath a sigh of relief. “Finally!” It had to be the big guy, no one else spoke in an accent even weirder than that of Arcturus. She was relieved when Kelan didn’t trust Tiny either, yet at the same time disconcerted when he mentioned a hostile encounter with one of his buddies. True to her word, she’s kept her eyes on the newcomers, though mainly Rook, and thus hasn’t noticed the damage Belial’s suffered. “Careful, big guy. I heard a high-powered railgun shot just before the defecation hit the ventilation. Any helpful sensors on that thing that might tell us whereabouts he might be hiding?”

Innocence Lost

Eldrid and Natasha

N/A, waiting for Bartimaeus and Crowvette

John Green and Orky

John didn't show it, but things were moving too fast for him as well. Yes, it was bad leadership for him to not be able to absorb new developments quick enough, but things were still moving too fast! So first, he spoke to Dante, "Your code checks out; you're accepted!"

Then Kelan's words came to him, and John said, "We're watching each other to see if he's an enemy - He says he's against the Ascendancy as well. Do you mean that he isn't?!" His face met his palm as he turned to Rachel and Narvia and said, "You two and Orky keep watch on him while we get to the bottom of this." Then to Dante, whose type of power armor he recognized, "Newcomer! If your sensors are sophisticated enough, look for snipers and bombard them with artillery!"

All the while, he was still in his 'liquid form', a liquid form that was a countermeasure to most forms of attack, but was of limited effectiveness against attacks that can just scatter said liquid form all over the deck. And by that, a punch from Rook can do that.

Orky didn't need to wait; he had stepped ahead, then turned around to face Rook, sizing him up to see if he was truly the worthy opponent he seemed.

Snow Cecil

"Either Moonstrike or the mercenaries used a jamming field to cut off communications - that's why I had to go back to my Starfighter in order to report," Snow Cecil said. "As I said, the mercenaries are only presumably in Ascendancy Service; I suspect they belong to someone trying to keep their dirty laundry secret, but it's more plausible that someone's just trying to steal the glory."

A pause, "Also, from what I gathered from the trajectory of the mercenaries - who wear the armor of the Incubus group - as well as Moonstrike, they are heading for the chamber of an AI called Realist, a high-priority prisoner with information relating to the Ascendancy." An idea then came to him, "It seems that their prime priority is Realist itself; not to be overconfident in my skills, but I can calculate the exact position in the AI’s chamber where Monarch, their leader, is confronting Realist. You might be able to drop an ‘Anvil’ on his head, then."

Snow smiled at that; this idea isn't likely to succeed, but it will inconvinience Incubus. And on the off-chance it did succeed, it would save Realist. Granted, gaining access to Realist afterwards would still be a pain, but it was all worth it.

@Gentlemanvaultboy@Starlance@Bartimaeus@Stern Algorithm@Crowvette@KillamriX88@The Jest@CriticalHit@Araby264@Landaus Five-One@AtomicNut@Senhara

Stella grit her teeth. Now it was bringing up Proxima. 'Bastard.' She figured if she thought it hard enough, maybe it might prod into the cloaked figure's mind just as it had done to her. She wasn't a fan of having her knives stolen. At the same time, maybe Stella's overall anger that she had kept down was boiling back up now that she had a clear threat to work towards.

Stella didn't have much time to work over the situation, so she went with something she knew would work. Magnetizing the floor the knives were passing over, she made sure that if there were any metallic objects passing above it, their trajectory would be deflected to the ground. Amongst the illusion copies, her true knife pulled downward and clattered against the hallway.

Reaching out her arm, she called the knife back to her with magnetic force quickly. She didn't want to leave her knife out in the open, even if she had one to spare. As it touched her hand it turned invisible with her, seemingly disappearing entirely. Stella was ready for another attack when the wind burst from the runes.

She was already magnetically attached to the wall, but in order to stay on without being thrown she had to increase her grip. Almost clawing into the wall, she managed to stay on. At the same time, she couldn't advance forward to pursue the cloaked figure. "It's getting away!" She shouted, though she doubted that anyone could hear her through the wind.

Partially due to a natural human instinct, and partially due to her strong magnetization, Stella ducked her head down to keep the wind off of her face. In that moment, she could have sworn she saw something strange amongst the streaking wind. A crystal, and it was using some sort of magic as well...

'Yeah right.' Her eyes were giving no errors, so it must have been her imagination. She stayed put, riding out the wind until it was all done. Stella knew when she would bring her head back up, she wouldn't see anything like that at all.

Kxeyun growls at what he sees outside and leaps up to the top of the ship, using his strength and nanobots to form a pathway up. Upon reaching the top, his wetsuit that shows off his girlish physical attributes retracts at his feet, then a metal observation dome missing the glass begins to slowly form and raise out of the top of the ship. "First one to get to me I will fight for, if they're good. Anyone else gets sent back down." A little ways above the ship the dome stops rising and he peers out of it, his eye scanning everything it can and logging all the data, a gentle chuckle coming from his lips. The movement of that amount of metal would trigger sensors tuned to detect large objects.

"Scan complete, caution advised, weaponry detected." "That's not good... Where am I?" "Unknown. Logging scan data." "Fucking great... Some random ass planet, weapons detected, someone somewhere wants me dead." He then pulls out his coilgun pistol and turns it on, holding it tightly. "The beginning of the end, dark as clouds of scorn. Pouring out like prophets of doom they do forewa-" "Not the time... We're observing."

The Circle Investigation

---

Narvia was highly nervous and was shaking a bit from fear since that massive mech, which landed kinda made her insanely nervous. However, she saw an armored suit come towards her and everyone else and wondered who it was. She was completely out of the loop for what’s going on, her superior officer is cryptic beyond belief. She noticed the damage on the suit in question, since she was nearer to it. ”Damn… that suit went through hell.” She thought to herself, a bit worried in what did that.

She heard the voice coming from it and heard what the older girl in question said, which calmed her nerves a bit. However, what made her a bit afraid was when he locked on Rook with his cannon. In this entire thing, she had a confused look on her face, it feels like a standoff somehow. She wanted to say something but couldn’t at this point.

She heard the alarms going off in the ship, which hurt her ears. She didn’t know exactly what was released. ”W-What is a Sword of Mars?” She pondered without exactly knowing what that meant. She couldn’t comprehend the sword of mars in the slightest. However, she did remember that her commanding officer told her to avoid the Sword of Mars like the plague. She had an even more confused look on her face because that’s just nuts.

However, she heard exactly what the highly distorted guy said about Rook. However, she heard an order directly from the older boy. Which was to watch Rook alike a hawk or something, which is possible since he did accept her don’t know about the others though. ”I will watch Rook.” She replied to the older boy with a slight worried tone to her voice. She remembered the boring nature of watching, that’s all she really got to do. She had to do something other than what she was doing. She stopped pointing her coilgun pistol to the ground and pointed it directly at Rook. She let out a sigh and was a bit too hopeful this would end in nothing in particular. ”Ugh, I hope Nikolas fills me on somethings about what is the hell is going on. Instead of being cryptic as hell.” She racked her brain with thoughts, she was being a bit annoyed with what’s going on exactly.

---

Stella's blade streaked through the corridor, the light it let off cascading over all the edges of the hard interior of the prison ship, flying at a deadly speed down the hall directly towards their mysterious opponent. Before it was stopped instantly in its tracks, without reaching its intended target. As if caught by some invisible being. The creature now met the blade with some tool- a staff- which set it alight momentarily. And then the voice pierced Reisus' mind.

It was chilling- as one might expect. Someone- or something, whatever this opponent was- was in his head. He didn't like it. But who would? How are- he began to question in his own consciousness, as if the entity could hear his thoughts- but he was soon interrupted by the movement of Stella's now-still-floating blade. It began spinning rapidly until soon, more blades began to split off from the first one until there were several. And then they stopped and faced him and his comrades. And flew straight towards them.

However, his squad had other plans. One of the knives clattered to the ground before it reached the group. Reisus was not completely sure what the others were completely capable of, but only one reason made sense to him why only a single blade would clatter to the ground- the rest were illusions, and the floor had just been magnetized. Smart. he thought. That would probably be this "Stella". She seems like she'd like magnetism..

However, before he could advance to engage with their opponent, he noticed something else. Soon the group was being sprinkled with water- it had seemed as though the water from Eldrid's attempted cleansing was now being blasted back towards them by sudden, powerful winds. Reisus didn't know much about combining magic and items, or magical items, and he only knew what he could learn from books- so he wasn't sure what the source of the wind was, perhaps the staff?. But perhaps maybe it came from the runes that were fading from the environment ahead of them.

The winds blasting into his face and eyes made it somewhat difficult to keep them open- even causing his eyes to tear up a little. But he did his best, and in the commotion he thought he saw their mystery opponent trying to slip away.
"It's trying to escape." he warned. "If this is the way Realist is, we have to fight through it, or chase it away." he advised his team. His unoccupied hand moved down to his thigh, and soon his legs had become heavier due to his magic. He started stomping down the hall- which now resembled a wind tunnel- trying his best to keep his balance. He would attempt to fire at the seemingly fleeing opponent, but he doubted his accuracy would be very great with the forceful wind blowing the barrel of the hand-gun off-course.