@Crusader Lord@Belladonna

Maria Falena

Maria was blushing a little when the other girl was starting to nibble on her shoulder, Trying to move away as she thought Luna to be some sort of vampire wanting to suck her blood. "Ah..yes my name is Maria, And what is yours?" She asked the rather clingy girl, Looking over towards Lilianna moving a bit closer towards her because she felt a bit safer. "Umm what is your name?" She said in a quiet manner wanting to get their names at least.

Once the introductions were over she got into her mech hovering above the ground for the time being, "Just let me know if you see anything" She radioed to the others. Now flying away form the others as well, Using the tech in her mech to search for who they were looking for.

Luna looked at the moth girl confused as she had just said her name. She takes a moment to stop nibbling the moth for a moment to say "I am Luna, Luna Rawl, I am a Neko, Vampire and... more. You, my cute little moth, a very cute and no I will not turn anyone into a vampire for now."She says booping the nose of the moth before jumping off and hopping into her mech.

"What a strange girl, I like her though." She says to her mech before looking over the message. "Uggghhhh can't we have a break, we just crashed landed and I didn't get to meet the other person in their mech..." She whines to herself before hovering off in her own direction.

@Crusader Lord @BCTheEntity @Eviledd1984

Felix took a surprisingly long glide-path down, taking full advantage of the humid thermal currents coming up from the lush underbrush. She'd made sure they left her comms on, in case anything like a brawl between the giant and the spider broke-out. Instead it was a more pleasant discussion on hedge-trimming to make room for their utterly massive mechs.

"But what if the trees are the sapient locals? You may want to check before you start cutting. Wouldn't want you two to accidentally declare war upon the entire forest."

They were in fact, only trees. But it was nice to keep them on their toes as she scanned for any working locator-beacons from the stranded mechs. If they were smart, they would have powered-down everything but the beacon ASAP. She just hoped none of them found themselves in such a fix that they needed to re-power their mechas on nothing but their emergency-batteries.

She saw the second wave led by Eileen had already disembarked, Eileen herself taking to the air while Roxanne was performing a radio-blind search-pattern for any mechs that had completely ran out of power... that or a body-search. A third unschedualed pod had crashed to the ground, and she quickly heard... a rather miffed occupant telling-off Doc Chamberain... followed by... one very giddy stowaway. She sure hoped she didn't really sound like that to Cahreli.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw one extra faint signal to her east. She couldn't be sure of distance; if the batteries had degraded she could be right on top of her and not realize it. "Got a signal to our east, will glide as close to source as possible and then work on clearing a path back to you, while you clear a path to me, we'll continue the search from there."

As she descended to the treeline, she deployed the chainsaws from her power-armor's stub-wings... This entire time she wasn't so much truly gliding as falling with style and with a very good landing-strategy in-mind as she tore a wide swath through the canopy felling any trees that happened to get in the way... Even Jenny would have no problem squeezing through such a path... so long as she didn't need to turn-around.

---

"Aaaaand clicky," Cahreli pressed a button that would normally fire one of the Colossus' Electromagnetic Rail Lances, but nothing happened; confused by this, she tried pressing that button again, multiple times, but all that did was transform her confusion into anger, "I SAID CLICKY, DAMN IT!!"

"Oh boy..." with a heavy sigh, Ray performed a diagnostics check on the Colossus to see why it wouldn't fire, and found the problem right away, "Um, Cahreli? Something's taking up a lot of electricity on your mech; it probably doesn't have enough left for those lances."

"Huh? Seriously?" Cahreli was not impressed, "Llllaaaaaaaaaaaaaame..."

Knowing exactly what would be drawing so much of the electricity, Cahreli had turned the air conditioning way down, but continued to fiddle around with it so it was still able to keep her cool. She might not have been quite as comfortable as she hoped, but at least now she could defend herself against enemies whenever they showed up. Even Cahreli knew that was the more important thing.

...

Suddenly, a signal could be detected coming from the East. This would be as good a time as any for Cahreli to test the WRM40L Warp Drives that she installed prior to the mission. All she needed to do is find the right setting...

Maria Falena

Maria meanwhile was high in the sky, It would be easy for her to scan the area for anyone running though trees. But the only problem would be how thick the foliage was, This meant she would have to move close to the tops of the trees. She could be easily attacked by anyone on the ground or in the tree tops.

So she had her mech go into defensive mood while looking around,She still could not shake off those nibble teeth of that cat vampire. Feeling a shiver running down her spine wanting to distance herself form her. Seeing the other girl chainsawing the trees bothered her alot since her people and herself hold the belief of every tree and animal being sacred. Radioing in with Felix, "Do you see anything?" She asked her. @Foster

Gasping at what Felix had said, Jenny instantly took a step back from the tree she was about to knock down. "Oh goodness you're right." Jenny then cautiously leaned close to the tree and poked it. "H-hello?" she said before patently waiting for an answer. After a few seconds of not getting a response she heard Felix felling trees off in the distance, along with Cahreli doing what sounded like attempting to fire her weapons at the trees. Jenny blushed under her helmet as she realized these were just normal trees, of coarse they were just normal trees. Why wouldn't they have just been normal trees! Jenny quickly turned to the direction Felix was and started gently pushing trees to the side and making her way towards the signal.

---

Eileen listened to Felix say she'd found a signal and instantly jetted towards Felix's location, transforming her mech into it's fighter mode for added speed. "I'll see if I can't find the source of the signal." Eileen said as she passed over Felix's head. Eileen shifted back into mech mode so she could better scan the area, hovering high above the treeline. The canopy was completely blocking her vision... She let out a sigh, deciding to land and continue her search on foot. Powering on her Photon blades and started cutting her way towards the signal. Eventually Eileen found herself in a clearing, a large de-powered mech sat there. This was the source of the signal. "I think I've found them."

---

Unbeknownst to Eileen, another mecha without the beacon on watches from nearby. The large machine stays concealed in the cover of the trees, unsure of the identity of Eileen, alongside being attacked by the natives, it observes closely, capturing every subtle move. The pilot, Kaselith Goto, mutters to herself, "Rather familiar... It moves like a friend. But so did the others." The machine moves subtly, prompting more muttering from Kase, "Itching to figure out who they are, Tabris? So am I... If they so much as run a light scan over here they'll see us, why not introduce ourselves first." The machine fires up the Beam Saber, dashing forwards with the powerful thrusters it has. With the agility of a cat, Tabris cuts through the trees in front of it, skidding to a stop in front of the mech, making sure to not hit the powered down machine with any sort of thruster backlash. The speakers fire up and Kaselith says "Unknown Mecha, state your intentions. Provided you do not seem like you are here to attack or capture, I will gladly deactivate my weapons."

From an exterior look, Tabris appears to be a completely normal, albeit shiny, mecha. The Beam Saber is positioned to defend its head, the thrusters are also pointed horizontally. It also is relatively crouched down, ready to pounce. It seems defensive over Azai, the blue lights softly glowing. The fins on the thruster pods also softly twitch, giving it a feeling of almost being alive... Too alive, one could say.

Luna floats around idly, sweeping back and forth across her area of land, idly shooting arrows of different natures at the ground below. She sighs a little bored as it's clear that there is nothing ahead of her.

"Wwaaaahhhhhh this is so boring..." She says stretching, having put her bow away beforehand, before adding. "Maybe the others have found something interesting?" Turning on the coms and opening them up to a general channel she says openly. "So there's nothing over my way, does anyone have anything interesting their way? It's kinda boring..."

Eileen was about to walk towards Azai and her de-powered mecha when an unknown burst from the trees, weapon drawn. Eileen powered up her mechs beam knuckles and crossing them in front of herself defensively, Eileen narrowed her eyes and waited. Eileen eased up after the newcomer asked to hear what Eileen's intentions were, Eileen then casually shut of her beam knuckles and dropped her defensive stance. "I've been sent here to rescue you. You were attacked by the natives I presume?" Eileen popped open her cockpit, the head of her mecha slowly opening up. Eileen stood up in and flexed her wings, hopefully this would make it pretty clear she was part of the same monster girl program. "There are others coming as we speak, we've brought some extra fuel to get any offline mechs operational again. You can turn off you sword now..." Eileen would then sit back down and close the cockpit of her mecha.

Eileen took a quick moment to look around not spotting any other mechs in the area. "Is the rest of your squad with you?" Eileen sent out a signal to everyone else to makes sure they got the message that she'd found the survivors, well a few of them at least.

Azai had quickly hid inside the cockpit of the Jackhammer when she had registered Eileen's mech on the thermal imager. The old bait and switch worked, but she was glad that there wasn't any need for violence. Slowly, and discretely, Azai began to power up some of the Jackhammer's other functions. Luckily the power cells weren't too drained but she wasn't going to get very far with the current state her mech was in.

"Stand down, it's friendly." Azai said over the comms. "Time to go. Hopefully others found too. Azai ready to go home. Azai need shower. Too much sweat. Azai hungry. Rations already out. Lead to extraction point."

It appeared the search had borne fruit, at least for the first drop team. Felix had detected a signal of some sort, and relayed the knowledge to Roxanne's drop team... or at least to some of them. Eileen, still on her lonesome, made the proactive decision to pursue the signal in her own right, whilst Maria merely remained airborne, asking whether Felix saw anything yet. However, Lilliana had yet to update her status, and Luna seemed distracted. Distracted to the point of turning on a communication system that should not have been turned off to begin with, and asking if anybody had found anything interesting yet. For part of a search team, this was a bad sign.

'Luna, please do not disable your communications during a search operation,' Roxanne stated bluntly. 'If you are caught off-guard whilst they are inactive, we will not be able to help you. Felix, you have done well; please take the rest of your team to rendezvous with the agent. Luna, Maria, Lilliana, there are two options: follow Eileen's signal and assist in retrieving the agent; or continue to search fo-' She halted mid-sentence as Eileen's report came in. Not one, but two survivors. Excellent. The mission was already roughly 55% of the way toward total success. 'Addendum: There are two options: follow Eileen's signal and assist in retrieving the two agents; or continue to search for the remaining agents.' Both would likely assist matters greatly, but as drop team A were already assisting the agents, drop team B would probably be in a good position to continue searching the region, as Roxanne chose to do - though she did announce that she was doubling the range of her steps to two kilometers from now onward, in order to increase the rate at which she performed her search.

---

"... Identity confirmed." The beam saber instantly shuts off, looking like nothing was there to begin with. The mecha stands up straight. "Azai, if you need emergency fuel or food, I am willing to share mine. I have a very large reserve for fuel." The thruster pods wiggle a bit. The weapons retract, followed by Tabris picking up Jackhammer. One last request is made from Kaselith, "Lead us to extraction."

Jenny made her way through the jungle, appreciating the work Felix put into clearing a path. It wasn't long before Eileen had found some of the lost pilots and activated her tracking beacon. Thankfully they weren't far, Jenny didn't know how long she'd be comfortable being entrapped in walls of trees. "I'm on my way!" Jenny said as she tried to pick up her pace. Jenny was closing in on Azai, Eileen and Kaselith's location, her approach being rather noisy as she crushed ferns and smaller trees underfoot. Before long she'd break through the treeline of the clearing (quite literally) a couple of trees gave way as Jenny stumbled into the clearing. _{"sorry trees..."}

---

Eileen looked over as Jenny stumbled forth into the clearing. "What good timing Jenny. I'll leave escorting this pair to the pickup location to you." Without another word Eileen fired up her thrusters and jetted off through the canopy. Eileen the patched in directly to Roxanne, "Roxanne I'm going back to searching for more pilots. Do you have any kind of signals near your location I could investigate?" Eileen made shifted her mech into jet mode and flew towards Roxanne's location.

---

Jenny watched Eileen fly off looking a little nervous under her visor. Jenny quickly looked down at Kaselith and her mech that was currently going to move another mecha? Jenny could probably help with that! Though... She decided it would be better if she waited for permission before trying to assist. "D-do you two need some help with that? I could carry it... Oh, wait! I have some extra supplies on me if you two are running low on anything. I've got the lot!" Jenny said as she detached a small supply canister from her back.

[@Everyone]

Maria Falena

Maria was still searching in her ship, So far not finding anything at the moment. She wondered if this was some sort of wild goose chase and they were being lead a stray somehow. The searchlight coming out from the eyes of her mech was moving back and forth though the forest trees, "Darn" She cursed to herself wanting to find the pilot and the mech, But their was something strange she noticed with some tree looking like they have been bent by something.

Flying closer towards the patch of trees that were moved, noticing a small whiff of smoke coming form the tree. It seemed to her whatever was hidden by the trees had caught fire a few days ago, Hovering a bit closer towards the ground seeing a wrecked mech with some large looking hole in the chest of the mech.

From what she could tell that this mech was stabbed by something, "Everyone come here i think i found the mech" She radioed in everyone. Searching the mech for the body of the plot.

---

Upon investigating said mech, it is quickly established that the pilot is dead, being slain without much struggle, the mecha also is at most scrap. A quick damage analysis indicates that the head and torso were impaled by an energy-based weapon, hence the remaining plasma burns. The pilot's brain and heart are missing, yet, there's no sign that anything actually entered this mech, whatever attacked it was precise in its blows. The arms have also been cut and completely severed at the joint in the shoulders and elbows, same as the mech. The attacker was not of the strength of the natives on this planet, there's something with their kind of tech out here, if not, stronger. Any sane-minded person would know that there's a mecha-sized predator here with advanced weapons, they should get out soon before another one falls to this murderer. After spending a moment in the area, the air has an identifiable aroma... Energy, plasma remnants, and... Fish? An inscription can be found on the destroyed mecha's legs, "We Can See No.373", which represents the active mecha Tabris, so this hunter is fast, deadly and sapient. Something doesn't add up here at all...

---

Two survivors. Lilianna felt a wave wash over her body, and even some tension release from her shoulders. She'd had her mech scouring down to the forest floor for evidence, floating and crawling almost like a predator out for prey. It wasn't intentionally an eerie manner of searching, as much as an attempt to be in-depth to a certain extent in the searching just in case the beacons were off. But soon enough, however, the voice of Roxanne once again rang over the comms about finding two survivors and searching for the other agents. Lillianna's appendages and herself seemed to perk up at the latter thing.

"Ouroboros calling in, will continue to look for survivors. No life signs or signals found yet, but will keep you all updated."

Lilianna leaned back in her seat, letting out a slow but ultimately unnecessary breath. Against the interior lightning of her mech, the strong corpse-like color tint on her skin stood out like a sore thumb, as did her expression of mixed relief and exasperation at the situation.

So far...things seemed to be going ok. No one had found out what she was just yet, or seen her outside of a mech.

Maybe, just maybe, she could prove herself here and then...ah. Perhaps she was getting a bit hopeful there, and to the one who had been her caretaker the signs of that hope were as obvious as daylight.

"....Hope isn't a terrible emotion to feel, but you have gotten at moderating these things since we first met at least." Dr. Chamberlin's floating form said, robotic voice ringing with the tint of empathy.

Lilianna's body jerked slightly at the doctor's words, stopping her mech cold for a moment. A tremble. Then another tremble...and then she took another deep breath. Memories flashed in her mind for just a moment, some she...would rather not have wanted to recall at this point in time. Or ever again, for that matter.

"Apologies...i didn't-"

It was then that the Undead Gazer heard Maria's announcement over the comms. The moth girl had found another of the mechs.

Lilianna immediately put her mech into gear, its many arms and thruster pushing it as it scrambled over to get to the scene. It was good news, potentially, but at the same time she was perhaps a bit desperate to get her mind onto another matter. Another topic entirely, for that matter.

"I am nearest to Maria's location, am en route to assist in investigation of crash site.

Maria, please hold your position until i get there."

Lilianna's tone was somewhat laced with tints of concern as she made her message over the comms, as professional as she was trying to sound otherwise. The undead gazer cursed at herself under her breath after getting off the comms, mainly for letting some of that mood leak in. However, more than this she was cursing those old memories for ever coming up from the abyss she had banished them to years ago. She cursed what had happened back then, what THOSE people had done, what the hell it had been like at that time.

The Kraken moved through the forest like a bat out of hell, however, until Lilianna eventually came upon the crash site as well. The tentacle armed mech pulled itself out of the treeline carefully, engaging flight mode fully again and beginning to calmly float over towards Maria and the crashed mech. The gazer took a few more unnecessary, yet calming, deep breaths as she made her approach before tuning into the comms once more. The last bits of the hectic emotions seemed to finally subside, all having been focused into her rush to get here to Maria.

This would be fine. The crash site seemed rather normal as she observed it through sensors and the like, though she hadn't taken a good view of the crashed mech yet. Besides, she couldn't hyperventilate herself into a coma even if the stuff came back. Her body was an immortal undead, something that in many ways was always going to be the same. In some ways...she was actually glad for that, to be frank.

"Maria, have you found signs of the pilot?" Lilianna spoke to the moth girl over the comms, just as she would be moving around to the side of Maria's mech to get a view at the crashed carapace.

Luna sighs annoyed that every option was a little boring. "I turned them off because I was stowing away and shouldn't reveal that I am here before it was safe. Anyway, the others will have that covered and searching is boring, can I come to join you?" She asks curiously, trying to find anything else to do. Not seeing anything ahead that looks remotely like a crash or crash site.

@BCTheEntity

@Crusader Lord

Maria Falena

Maria was quickly looking over the mech and the damages that was done to it, From what she could see it was heavily damaged and it looked like their was a hell of alot of damages done. Using the scanning function of her mech, She could tell who ever was piloting this mech was though hell.

Investigating further she could see the fight lasted what seemed like a hour and a half or so, Afterwards the pilot was overwhelmed or outsmarted and was taken out. Hearing the female voice of her comrade asking her a question, "Nothing yet" She said into the comms. Moving her mech a bit closer towards the destroyed mech, Using the search lights of her mech to check if the pilot was still inside. Unfortunately she could see the dead pilot inside making her cover her mouth to stop herself form both screaming and puking.

Ah. It appeared Maria had, in fact, discovered the final mech. Notably, she did not confirm that she had found the pilot; instead, as Roxanne altered her trajectory and made her way toward the signal of Maria's mech, the papillon speculated that either she was dead, or had escaped the mech and presumably disappeared.

It became immediately clear once she arrived at the scene that the pilot had not survived. Worse still, it was evident that there was no possibility that she had fallen to local monstergirls; the damage inflicted to both pilot and mech was severe, far too much for any mere mortal to be capable of. This was the end result of a mech battle, with an enemy pilot. Aware, sapient in fact. And it seemed they had a new target.

'Callsign: Judge reporting in,' Roxanne intoned quietly, pinging both the local radio and the station proper, Doctor Rei specifically. 'Agents Azai Cislacen and Kaselith Goto confirmed living and active, currently in company of fellow pilots. Agent Maia Reater confirmed deceased; cause unknown, but intelligent and highly technologically advanced in nature; engaging contaminant sterilisation protocols; requesting salvage operation for what remains.' Once the good doctor had confirmed Roxanne's statement, she did what needed to be done to ensure no possibility of infection remained: one arm aimed itself directly at the pilot, and a single burst of plasma was launched, blowing open the cockpit and vaporising utterly the body of the former Maia Reater.

'Mission protocols have been concluded. All agents, converge on the extraction point immediately.' The subtle urgency in Roxanne's voice was obvious, and for good reason. The sooner they came together, the safer they would all be if they were discovered.

“Fuel now. Food later.” Azai replied curtly.

She was eager to get some dinner, but getting off planet was a bigger concern right now. She dismounted the Jackhammer and hooked the fuel cells from the canister up to it. After about ten minutes, the power had been transferred over.

“Should be enough. We go. Stay alert. Don’t stop. Follow Azai.”

The oni quickly settled back into her mech and checked the power levels. There was more than enough juice to get to the extraction point, which was good in the event that they ran into trouble between here and there.

“Staggered formation. Move.” Azai ordered as she quickly set off on point.