That shot was actually going to go wide. You'll see why later.
We'll start with the moment by which the Blue Crow intercepted Nero's attacks with a very shiny sword. Now, Nero wasn't an overly-smart guy, but his experience as part of the Ascendancy would properly inform him about the nature and uses of Perfected Electrim, that it was a difficult substance to make and very precious, because it was nigh-unbreakable and could be charged with magic. The Ascendancy had ALOT of the stuff at his disposal, and Nero had been rather keen to steal some, but uhh...they knew never to store it on the same ship as him, so he never got any. Fast-forward to the preasant, where he and Birdman were now properly clashing, because - surprisingly - the guy wasn't having any trouble following his movements, and he had a magic sword to defend himself with. Go fig.
"Did they tell you that Kaisoken Dust worked only on children?"
Nero actually shot back with "I don't really care what the Ascendancy told me.", but Blue Crow would never hear it. Even if he could see right through the Shadow Step, he probably couldn't penetrate the silence of it. It's just as well. Nero would only infuriate him, and he didn't need that in his day on top of whatever came to pass in the next few minutes. The disappearing blade, while a nice trick, didn't have the impact it was expected to. Maybe if it had been swung at somebody else. Maybe...anybody else. Because if its invisibility aura didn't register on Nero's visor - say, if it were on the wrong setting or there wasn't a setting FOR this - and the sword itself didn't raise the right kind of sparks to practically illuminate it when in contract with the Electro-Daggers...there was still Nero himself.
He's not smart, at least...not if you asked him the square root of a very big number and told him he couldn't have a calculator, or anything heavy about history, or alot of academics... He had great instincts, though, and very perceptive. Plus, he moves with great speed and precision. And let's not forget how good he is with those knives. It doesn't take him much to imagine where the blade is and act accordingly, which is why - apart from the occasional flinch - Blue Crow accomplished nothing. Nero deflected him as much as the man had done same when they began fighting. The mercenary saw through his stealth power. The Star Marine saw through the stealthy blade. One-All. This is why Nero was able to spoil Blue Crow's shot towards one of his friends in back. He had the proper ability to turn aside the invisible blade and snap Monomolecular Blade #2 at the wrist of the merc when he was taking aim. Even if the guy was properly armored, that was an 'Agh!'-Quality distraction, and the Matthews wouldn't even be threatened. They took cover anyway, and shoved their earth wall forward in a manner to benefit their wraith-y comrade.
That's completely fine. During the transition of said wall, Nero would perform a stomping kick against Clue Brow'sBlue's CluesCrude Bowel's Blue Crow's knee, both to cause him a nice imbalance and to generally kick OFF of him to roll back on that ramp now.
During the their pre-mission prep time, Narvia had actually remarked to him about the attention to his stealth, always straight to the point when talking their battle plans. For some reason, the girl's laugh made him feel...what? He wasn't sure. It felt like she was putting him on the spot, but her words sounded more like approval and her laughter pleasant.
"Well, I mean...if you're gonna do a job right... Right?"
It was difficult for him to place people, sometimes. Part of the reason why would always be that his life had been a kind of bare-bones survival among largely indifferent caretakers, followed by the army taking him away for torturous experimentation, then fighting in their war. Seeing and hearing something warm and unpleasant, and having it directed at him, was an uncommon thing in his life. Mostly, he felt he was accepted because they were all in the same boat. Nobody minded that he'd actually enjoyed killing. Ash and Flame always thought of him as part of the team. He and the others talked regularly, albeit sometimes he felt a little awkward. This was just different, somehow, more than being merely accepted into the fold. He didn't know how to deal with it.
The dust and smoke settled from the latest attack, soldiers calling out the all-clear and sounding off their positions. It was moments later that several same Ascendancy soldiers found their commanding officer, lying half-cooked on the ground by enemy fire. A quick glance was all you needed to tell that he was a goner, a long goner. As in, he was cooling from the initial blast that killed him already. The Sergeant-At-Arms glared coldly at this, his teeth then gritting as he shouted...
"Nero, you son of a bitch! GET OUT HERE!"
Naturally, he appeared from the shadows, as per always. There was just darkness, and then there he was, bandaging a wounded arm where one of the Rau've had slashed at him. Nothing serious. He had a way with gathering only flesh wounds while others expired around him. That's what they hated about him: He lived. He opened up with "What the hell do you want?", and the Sergeant rounded on the young figure behind the Killer Mask, pointing at the corpse on the ground.
"The Commander is DEAD! You were suppose to be looking after him. Bodyguard detail... Do you know what that fucking MEANS, boy?!"
"It means that I'm to kill the enemy that's trying to kill him."
"It means you're suppose to protect him! Keep him alive! DOES THIS LOOK ALIVE TO YOU?!"
"Looks like he forgot to duck to me."
The Sergeant lost it. This whole time, this whole stinking campaign, this kid had been nothing but trouble. He never defended them, never warned them of an incoming attack, never did anything more than just kill and bust their chops, laughing at how weak they were to depend on a BOY to do their fighting and complaining when they told him to do anything other than his job as one of the thrice-damned 'Star Marines', which was to kill. He lost it, and immediately drew a bead with his rifle to shoot-
One of his men cried out "NO!" and shoved the barrel aside as he pulled the trigger, simultaneously aware of both the rage exploding towards the thought of beating the soldier for insubbordination...and a sudden twist of fear in his gut as he'd seen the boy snake in a manner clearly meant to avoid the shot and launch himself forward to tear him open...had the soldier not intervened. As it stood, the shot went wide and rage found him glaring at the soldier in question.
"Sir, we need him!"
"No, we don't! Better to kill 'im now, and handle this mission with good dependable men!"
"You can't-"
"Fucking let 'im."
Both men stopped and stared at Nero now.
"Shoot me, you fucker. I want you to do it. Make it easy. Gimme the excuse, so I can gut you dead."
"Nero, you shut your goddamn-"
"I don't take orders from you. I have ONE order: Kill the enemy. That's what I'm here for. Kill the enemy and kill the enemy and kill the motherfucking enemy! Not to look after some shit-for-brain soldiers like you! So, go on. Shoot me, so I can kill the enemy."
They glared at this boy without words, and they knew that they had a far worse danger with them than their own opponents in war. What had the Ascendancy been thinking, turning this loose on the battlefield...?
They were all classic cases of being forced to grow up too early. What'd it mean when they still acted normally?
Mission Start!
They had entered the ship, and immediately the twins saw him running off to do his thing. Indeed, they saw him cast the Shadow Step upon himself and become shrouded in night, the shadow that would merge with other shadows when in proximity and render him invisible, the shadow that would walk wraith-like even in direct light and make it difficult to distinguish who and what he was. The Matthews knew, of course. Everyone in the Star Marines knew each other's powers, especially post-war when they actually started talking to one another properly. Nero was quiet and stuck to the shadows all the time. For the moment, he didn't call upon Ariel via communicator yet because she likely needed some time to set up and be prepared. It was alright. With no one aware that he was around, he had the upper-hand.
So far, no opposition to be found. Were they all dead? He'd remain in stealth, regardless. He'd once done a whole mission, this way. The enemy suspected everything except an enhanced human stealth agent, and it was too late before they even realized it. Anyway, Nero had still been investigating corridors by the time he got the signal from Iris and Samuel that they were checking out an Armory. He'd passed that a little while back. Go back? Make sure no one was coming? Nero paused in the darkness. He'd been eliminating a few lights around here for good measure, but now...
”Hehe, always to the point, aren’t you, Nero?”
Yeah, I said I'd be watchin' 'em, so I guess I'd better stick to them.
The light directly outside the Armory was one that he'd conked out when he'd passed there before, because he'd been planning to get in there earlier, and now he saw Samuel and Iris walking in. Whether they noticed his wraith-like form in between shadows was down to them. He'd said where he'd be, what he was doing around them. From the doorway, Nero saw what the Twins did first, the microwave weapon, and immediately recalled a few times when some commanding officer had decided to 'discipline' him for doing what he'd been placed in the army to do. Bastards... He was brought back to reality when some guns were primed from the part of the room that none of them had been watching.
Oh, for fuck's sake... I slack off for ONE SECOND...
"Didn't expect to meet you three so soon - Would you mind throwing down your weapons and surrendering?"
There was a...we'll assume man, for now. He was wearing a voice-modulator mask that was in the shape of a bird, protecting their identity for the time being. Armed though he was, the main issue was his back-up dancers, four mechanoids ready to open fire. Well, at any rate, we all know what the answer to the guy's question was going to be. It was going to be NO. And...it's hard to know who really acted first here. Was it Iris with the deconstruction? Was it Sam with the sudden earthy barracade for them to drop down into? Or was it Nero, whose shadowy self slipped from the darkness of the hallway to throw monomolecular knives at the lights before drawing Electro-Daggers to attack robots and masked humanoid alike with as the Armory was plunged into darkness?
Well, ! dunno, but one thing's for certain: There would be blood tonight!
I don't think we should rush it either. I see this in stages. I see the home office as the start of something bigger. The MMC has been developing things on Mars. We've made reference to Doom because they could be up to something far more illegal than 'They killed to make a profit'. Niko and Han could enter the main office to find evidence, find implications of more going on than just the assassination. Han would find out certainly WHO killed tha RAMI spaceship, setting him further into things, but evidence of secret facilities and illegal experiments, the CEO being nowhere to be found, assets moved so the office is no more than a front could also happen. Hell, the CEO could be working with an advanced alien scout sent ahead and in secret by your Big Bad. Dragonball villains are often sneaky like that.
I wouldn't go with a GT reference, personally. It's your show, though.
The transport hummed quietly in the background as it took them over the walls and the safer half of the city to their destination. 'Next stop, the quarantine zone.' The announcement filled him with an unknown sort of dread, though he was aware of some of what caused it. He had been in the zone, and let me tell you, first-timers, it wasn't pleasant. Sure as hell wasn't a great thing to first wake up to, either. You always remember your first encounter with them. Mavericks... Standing there, staring with a vacant smile and a twinkle of madness in your eye... Crimson Nova - Crim, Crimson, Nova, or even just The Maverick Virus - had developed from a supposedly powerful but unstable Force Metal, causing those upgraded with it to tweak out of control, losing both mind and soul. Well...nobody's been able to prove the soul, but you get the idea. It's just an expression the humans say.
He himself was not human. Sitting among these people was a fox-like machine, or pseudo-machine, or however you want to put it. Reploid technology was a complicated science. Someone once told him that Reploid was short for Replicated Humanoid, much the way Pseudoroid denoted a Pseudo Reploid, or a Reploid-like being that was different than the humanoid types. Case in point: Swift Fox. He wasn't a human like Shanna or Richter the Reploid, but a humanoid fox-like Pseudoroid. Unlike most Pseudoroids, though, he had a few differences. For instance, someone likely designated Gauss Atlas for her - Yes, that's a she - upon creation. Swift had a designation. You could see it written on his chest, but...that wasn't a name. He wasn't named, on creation because his model - the Nu-Fox versatile soldier - was not a single machine, you see. They were an army built in a factory, the place where he first awoke. Swift designated himself, after it'd been established that he wasn't a Maverick and he had individuality, a Bio-Metal core, unlike every other Nu-Fox.
Nobody knew how they could possibly work without one. It was a mystery to this day.
Anyway, Swift tried to settle what had to be his equivalent of the nerves. He gave the medic a glance of understanding at her own anxieties, knowing that while she was mainly there to support them from the back, he and the others here would have to fight the madness out there. He sympathized, though, because it was definitely shocking to even witness it, to know that 'That thing was once a sane and happy, now violent and crazy'. He'd never get use to it, unlike 'I work for the money' Duster, nearby. Oh right! They were introducing themselves! Probably better to be familiar with one another. The vulpinoid spoke up next, raising his hand as sort of a greeting.
"It's actually my first mission too, though unfortunately...I've been here before."
He had kind of a youthful voice about him, maybe not what others would expect. Then again, he technically was younger than everyone here.
"My name is Swift Fox, and I woke up not far from the walls, originally, just on the wrong side."
He lowered his hand and his gaze, glaring more at the floor now.
"I've seen what Crimson Nova does to Reploids, what it reduces them to. I don't care about the credits. I just want to see this end."
@Balthazar007 One second. I thought I saw a thing which counted the winnings and Niko didn't have any. If that's wrong, I'll just edit that.
EDIT: I couldn't find the line that mentioned the actual winnings right now, so I'm just going with what you said, and now there's an extra paragraph dedicated to Niko being surprised at how wrong he was.
The flight was considerably more pleasant than the fight that preceded it...as well as the meeting with Mirai that followed it.
Having someone who could - given the right prompting - help you to get almost immediately out of the country without pulling any official powers was extremely good, no doubts. Indispenceable, one might say. Not to say that any of this would be habit-forming. All of this was less 'calling in a favor' and more 'asking a favor which would be necessary to repay later', and he would gladly pay whatever it took for this, just so long as it wasn't straightforward money, as he didn't win any and his army pay wasn't going to bury him in luxuries for the rest of his life. Even still, it was a calm and restful flight, and West City soon held their arrival, where a simple cab, booking of somewhere modest to stay, and dropping in at Capsule Corp was to follow.
They hadn't even gotten to see Mirai upon their first showing at the main HQ. She was off-duty, and would be in at the evening, as per usual. They would have to leave the phone there, sent to her inbox to work on. No problem. If you could trust anybody, it was Capsule Corp, and if you could trust anyone IN Capsule Corp, it was the ever-dedicated and ever-diligent types who worked the late shifts. With time on their hands, Niko had decided to make good on his promise of Capsule shopping while there, so it didn't look like he came all this way just to mooch off of the company. He would be dipping a bit into his reserves here, but a Capsule Car and basic storage units were a good investment for your personal needs. It's certainly handle his luggage if he needed to vacate the hotel in a hurry.
Of course, it was then that Niko got a good look at his account and literally went "Agh!" with a double-take. There were a few more zeroes there than he remembered! He was left standing there, basically in WTF Mode, when he looked to the note attached to the transaction history, reading "You forgot this when you checked out. All of our competitors who make it to the Final 16 receive payment for their efforts, and it only goes up, the further you make it. See you next time!" with a smiley at the end of it. Niko was left dumbfounded, but a nervous smile crept along his face, followed by laughter and "I am such an idiot, sometimes.".
It was only later in the evening when the call came to return to Capsule Corp HQ. Niko had spent the time doing various things to distract himself from the matter at hand, as it naturally bothered him a great deal. All except checking to make sure his brother was alright, via phone. The answer was that he was both stable and looked after, so all was well on that front. Sadly, this is the part where things take a definite bad turn, as Mirai had met them in-person now with the results...and what she'd uncovered led to some rather nasty accusations, levied not only at the Martian Mining Corp...but also Wu Han. He was, after all, one of the Wuye-ying, himself. The fact that she found out herself, with no prompting at all to look into it, very well underlined Mirai's performance. However, she was under a misapprehension that was best left cleared.
"He's not going to kill me."
Niko turned to face Han enough so that both he and Mirai were in his field of view.
"If he were going to do it, the most sound opportunity would be when we were attacked by half a dozen men from his organization. Seven men against one me, miles away from where I'd last been seen? That would've been ideal, and if it were a matter of who gets credit to the kill, I imagine the boss' son wouldn't have trouble making the claim, anyway."
Now, he looked back at Mirai to give her a reassuring smile.
"He's on our side. It's a matter of honor for him. He only puts down disreputable targets. And thank you... I know it's not evidence, but up until now, it's only been supicions and worries. Now, I know, and now I can really start to put on the pressure. These people have gone too far, both here and in space, and it's about time they were put in their place."
MegaraFoxfire
sharkbites
Izurich
Owlriel
Bork Lazer
Abstract Proxy
NinoDelDesastre
Lildear18