Part 63: Mission 18 - The Tragic One Night Stand - Part 1
Here’s the chosen team and the sit-rep: the Whispered and the Captain have been kidnapped by
As the poet once said:
We have no lingering feeling for our past / we are dummy boys.
The distantly resounding iron drums / are our lullaby.
Survive and live through at least this day!
The terrorists soon detect our approach but Seina says they’ll need time until Takuma is ready and orders a deployment.
Noin notices the large quantity of units that came out, indicating that our diversion seems to be working.
Quatre and Duo notice that these are, indeed, the same troops that did the plane hijacking - Trowa and Wufei will probably show up at this rate...
With that, Mao orders everyone forward and to keep the enemies’ eyes pinned on us – we have to provide assistance to Sousuke.
Ok, let’s get to work. Most of the team will spend this first turn moving up but Hyoryuu is close enough to tag a Serpent with his Freezing Gun (using alert just to be safe).
Eh, that’s alright.
Kouji shows how it’s done, though.
While we’re moving closer, Mike gets Golion’s morale up some.
Izumi is the only of the Nadesico’s Angels to get in attacking range but she’s also the one that needs levels the most.
Bah. We need to get closer to stop using these piddly attacks!
Kazuma can just zoom past everyone and blast an unsuspecting Bushnell, though.
Better. That guy should go down to a counter-attack.
Enemy Phase!
I’m starting to get sense of deja-vu.
Thankfully, Kazuma won’t hog all the kills as these Serpents won’t miss the chance to snipe.
This Savage also thinks it’s best to avoid the Top Ace and goes for…Gaogaigar.
It ends as well as expected but they’ve just enough HP to avoid being oneshotted.
Both a Bushnell and Serpent try sniping at Golion.
Urgh, I should’ve known better than to let Hikaru defend again but at lea-
That was a 90% hit chance missile. The fuck?
Let’s just have Big Daddy blast that Bushnell to get over being screwed by the RNG gods.
Best. Dad. Ever! He doesn’t give a shit about dodging missiles in a battleship!If this wasn’t Full Metal Panic, I’d say that Lunamaria was piloting that AS.
One more Bushnell but this one actually scores a minor hit before getting disintegrated.
The whole family levels up and Shihomi learns the ever-so-useful Bless…does this qualify as an example of Blessception?
The Bushnell decides to go after Kouji, who can still use his crotch missiles.
I think Gai has been teaching everyone how to dodge like a real whilst in a Super/Ship.
Next up, is this Savage who manages to tink Kaiser’s paintjob before getting blown away in one hit – mind you, Kouji doesn’t have Iron Wall cast.
That’s how defensive he is when his levels/upgrades get going.
Seems the RNG gods are compensating me for the 90% miss. Golion oneshots this Birdman in what might be the luckiest hit we’ve had thus far.
Player Phase!
That there Serpent is weakened enough that Hayato should have no problem with him.
Like so.
I thought Enryuu’s friendship bonus with Hyoryuu would be good enough to get a hit in. I was wrong.
Hyoryuu gets Chouryuujin going and sets out to try again.
There we go.
Kurz snipes away and takes out the weakened Savage.
Mao then moves up with him and aims for the Bushnell.
Good, good.
Volfogg does his thing and oneshots another Birdman.
As the battle wears on, a distinctive pattern of explosions starts rocking what Hikaru describes as her Holy Land, the convention center.
However, this attack was not part of Mao’s plan with Sousuke, so it seems there’s someone else making a mess inside the place…
The explosions are due to Trowa, who seems to have betrayed the group and taken Seina by surprise, while Kalinin figures her organization is less put- together than she expected.
Another issue is that one of her captives had the temerity to hide explosives in her earrings and Seina is rather amused at the trinket; she notes with some irony that school girls these days seem rather rambunctious.
Kalinin gets in the way but Seina wonders how Kalinin plans to protect both girls in his state.
Kalinin has an ace in the hole: Sousuke, who he was quite confident would arrive.
Seina is actually rather peeved that Sousuke rates so much confidence, and points her sidearm at the girls.
She informs Sousuke that there's no way he can kill her before she could pull her own trigger, killing off one of his friends.
As her last little piece of revenge, she'll give Sousuke the chance to choose which girl she aims at.
Tessa tells her to aim at her, saying Kaname is just a civilian, but Seina isn't buying it as she knows what Kaname truly is.
When she announces that she's going to pull the trigger in five seconds, leaving Sousuke a lifetime of regret, he has to think very fast.
It's a hard choice: lose a precious Whispered, or have Mithril decapitated.
He runs out of time, and Seina fires randomly... but her gun is struck by a bullet from another intruder (Heero), and there's no way for her to fight back any more.
However, she's not the only one in this base with weaponry, and as a big explosion erupts she begins to run off, saying that she can't die here without finishing some business first.
Kalinin runs off in pursuit, telling Heero and Sousuke to take the girls to safety.
As they get moving, Heero tells Sousuke that hesitation is fatal in battle - and that his hesitation just about resulted in both girls' deaths.
That said, he's not going to reject Sousuke because of it.
Meanwhile, the double agent Trowa is trying to prevent Takuma from getting aboard his mech, the Behemoth.
Takuma pleads with him to move, saying that he promised his sister - apparently fighting is the only way he can establish any proof that he exists at all.
Takuma has an ally in Wufei, who pops out to take Trowa on.
When he tells Trowa not to deprive Takuma of the chance to fight, Trowa notes that this fighting is itself meaningless: the world surely won't change because of it.
Wufei claims that fighting is its own meaning, and points to both Takuma and the A21 warriors as example – this is the only way for them and many other warriors out in the world to prove their existence.
When Sousuke comes out and announces that the girls are safe, Kurz teasingly asks if he took so long because of trying to decide who to save first.
Heero points out in his usual deadpan that the enemy's trump card is coming, wiping out the convention center in the process.
As the Behemoth comes out, our people cannot believe its size – easily on par with a Super Robot and much bigger than any AS they’ve ever seen.
Tessa cries out to Takuma, already in the grip of the Lambda Driver, to stop it - there must be some other use for his mech than destruction!
Actually, destruction is precisely his goal - not for his own sake, but to make his sister happy by demolishing and incinerating all around.
He plans on starting with Tessa and Heero but, before he moves any closer, he’s intercepted.
It’s Trowa, who deploys in a Serpent and moves after Takuma.
Quatre and Duo are very happy to see that Trowa is, indeed, on their side but Takuma quickly yells out for him to get out of the way.
Trowa's mech doesn't last long, despite all its bullets hitting their target (Much to Quatre’s dismay
)Noin quickly recognizes the same system used by Gauron during the hijacking and Takuma confirms: the Lambda Driver is doing its work admirably, and its integration with the huge mech seems to be flawless.
Wufei pops out and announces that this fight belongs to the warriors this new world has given birth to.
As for Takuma, Seina tells him to burn this place to the ground and show the entire world their power.
Urgh. That Behemoth will be a giant pain-in-the-ass as he, like Gauron, casts Focus, Zeal and Iron Wall - meaning that he will rush your guys and if a Real robot gets tagged, it might be oneshotted due to the +damage effect of the Lamda Driver.
Next update, we’ll deal with all these crazies and teach them to deploy something other than Bushnells (and Wufei’s crummy gundam) to fight us.