Scene #5491: MISSION: Binary Star (8)

Owner	Pose
Starbound Flotilla	This game zone for IFO, Interstellar Frontiers Online, appears to be a tremendous, shattered-open planetoid instead of an island in VRMMO Earth. The fractured planetoid drifts far above Earth, something like two thirds of the moon's size at least, and it glitters with a startling array of lights that indicate spots of activity, habitation, or perhaps even space colonization. Segments of the tremendous planetoid seem to offer strange mineral themes, conspicuous organic growth, or even obvious technological artificiality, depending on the nature of the individual fracture. And today's specific site of interest... Is out in the goddamn middle of nowhere!! RKVs, IFO's equivalent of Key Dungeons, always take the form of coordinates and times. The Flotilla, of course, have set up the infrastructure required to hijack an RKV. But what truly is an RKV? For those who don't know, George explained it succinctly: "Well, if you get enough metal going fast enough, slinging around black holes or whatever gravity you can skim off the top of the galaxy, you've got a ready-made slingshot to basically kill a planet or something. This thing's probably aimed at some craphole at the end of a galactic arm or something, so when whoever built it needs to fire it they'd just signal a little thrust and it'd go flying off to wherever." Unfortunately, such power will be lost when they eventually have to bring it to a halt. Similarly unfortunately, the original creators are lost to time, beyond contact in some way or another. In order to stop this thing, they'll need to match its speed, even if only for a moment, and so the Flotilla have rigged up one of the game constructs: An RKV Loop! The massive, industrial-looking space-age metallic ring-construct is the width of a full spacecraft, lined right up at the coordinates and times Captain Laika provided. She's helping out on this mission as well, having reconstructed one of her secondary exoskeletons to join as a Loader. She's docked on the tremendous mechanical ring itself, as, one hopes, the others will be as well. The craft -- of which the group unfortunately knows almost nothing -- will be slinging through soon. When it does, George has informed the group, they will need to use their reflexes to engage the INERTIAL CLAMPS on the ring! This is one of those rather critical QTEs to get through, and it'll need people stationed at each inertial clamp module all around the ring to demonstrate their own superhuman reflexes. First challenge of getting aboard the RKV is to latch on! The inertial clamps look rickety, which is not a look that you want to have in something that is supposed to be what prevents those latching onto the RKV from experiencing over half a billion Gs of force, but George has assured everyone that as long as their reflexes truly are lightning-fast, they'll latch their inertial reference points to the ship in flagrant violation of Newton's law. The RKV, itself, is incoming. A countdown has been provided, but it's inexact at best. As is so often the case with old fifties science fiction, they're gonna have to eyeball this doppler-blueshifted superweapon with their flash reflexes! Press the button as soon as you see the violet flash!!!
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima is in her own loader, clamped onto her ring with her feet and one hand. The other one has several armor plates shifted up along its wrist, an extension arm plugging her directly into the systems, saving any time lag for the RIG to move. As the timer comes down to the final ten seconds, she drops into the state of 'slow time' that only DNI can provide. Wait for it... Wait for it... <<THERE!>>
Septette Arcubielle	There is absolutely no doubt in Septette's mind. She can do this. Of course, there would also be absolutely no doubt in her mind if she couldn't. Such are the vicissitudes of pride. Bladelike fingers tremble almost imperceptibly over the button. She's checked a dozen things over in her calculations. The likelihood of major mechanical failure in her own motor systems during the button press, and how best to compensate if that occurs; the error bars on their measurements on its velocity, and thus the delay between its position as viewed by photons as opposed to its real position, to name a few. Her fingers start moving milliseconds before the RKV is in its proper position. But their movement lag is just what was anticipated- they strike the button at precisely the correct instant. CLICK. "I get the feeling we're in for a wild ride, here," she murmurs to no-one in particular. Hopefully, everyone- and everything- gets out of this mission in one piece. After all, there's one potential outcome more terrifying than being grazed with a full-speed RKV. Disappointing a Russian pirate dog.
Alexis Maaka	Maaka's done this sort of ship to ship attacks before, but that wasn't so...fastly done. Also they were in the ocean, not space. At least her suit's space-protective, makes it easy for her to actually not die in vacuum. Loading a coilgun styled battle rifle, she gets ready to press the button as the QTE begins. She presses the button with lightning reflexes, the clamper device firing off to launch and latch onto the other ship's hull. This should not even come close to working, certainly when eyeballing it, but Maaka's optical software does have calculation programs for this exact purpose. CLICK.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki, looking like a cross between a space elf and a Mad Max extra, seems eager to put her skills to the test! "Lightning is one of my nicknames!" she says cheerfully. Well, the Purple Lightning at least. She's got absolutely ludicrous reflexes, and has no doubt of her ability to engage the inertial clamps at the right moment. Faith in the clamp's ability to hold... well, that's another matter. Still, Yuuki flashes a bright smile as the RKV roars into sight. "Heeeere we go!" she shouts optimistically and enthusiastically. CLICK.
Kyoko Takada	Kyoko is here in her mecha again, fully loaded this time, having recovered from all the spent material of that last fight. She's letting other people push buttons, since the best she could do in that regard is set up a camera system to push it for her. An aimbot, if you will. And that feels like cheating. Maybe it is cheating? But there are robots here, too... aren't there? She's still pondering the implications while all the buttons get pushed, but is braced for the acceleration.
Staren	Staren has brought his own giant robot. He's not sure what exactly will be needed, but he can make things work, he thinks. He can swith to his armor and disembark if needed. The SSC Stranger than Fiction is nearby, ready to track the RKV's passing with its sensors. SAIL should be able to calculate their position afterwards, and use the erchius drive to pick them up afterward if need be. Now, the others seem to be forgetting that this world runs on game rules. Regardless of the physical implausibilities of any of this, if even a nanosecond's error would kill them, CARDINAL wouldn't get its story. So he's not that worried that it will go wrong. Still, there's no need not to take basic precautions: He's programmed his mecha to hit the button as soon as its camera detects the flash.
Kirito	Kirito's not gonna say it, but being a computer geek with an appreciation for science and technology, he does know the gist of how dangerous a small dense object moving at insane speeds in space can be. Dangerous enough that he's chilled by the thought of it, and has brought his melee-fitted Loader out to deal with it. He's docked not far from Laika, and is quiet like usual for these foreign, bizarre missions. With Silica taking charge so valiantly, he's loathe to do anything that would break her stride unnecessarily. That would just be plain rude. For once though, he's confident... enough. A QTE-style escapade to ensure safety? Kirito's entire fighting style is a big string of non-stop QTE's when you break it down to its components. His reflexes are ready. And reactions almost instant, thanks to being sufficiently warned!
Silica	Silica may not be the fastest of the Gatecrashers. But she's certainly no slouch. Her magenta eyes watch the indicator, ready to smack the button to latch point. "Leo 1, ready!" she calls, her reflexes kicking in as the doppler shift goes from blue to purple. "Latch point secure!"
Tomoe	Here Tomoe was once more an she was taking the form of Eisen it just felt to fit the setting better. Still she was amused it was also fun to be tiny rather than a towering Amazon. She settled in though knowing they would have to get to work on this site, her gear was ready and she too was not waning to let down a certain Russian Space Pirate Dog. Who really had reasons to be angry with humans given what happened. She was not in a fighter today but a more melee focused Loader, with a bit of tank, armed with some kind of polearm from the looks of it she move the loader to dock just behind Kirito's own. <<Here we go again and anyone remeber when games used to be fun??>>
Starbound Flotilla	Punching the latches is always chaotic. The fact that the data is incomplete, the fact that automation is so difficult at speeds that have anything to do with relativity, and the fact that eyeballing it always produces a small amount of lag means that the inertial clamping ring latches onto multiple points simultaneously. Fortunately, the inertial clamps work; a little acceleration bleeds in, but at .00001% bleed, that just comes in the form of a cockpit-straining rush. Unfortunately, that's enough bleed to instantly destroy the ring, leaving everyone The blue shifts to violet. And if it had shifted to red, EVERYONE would be in trouble. Or at least would have to wait another week or so. But no, instead, something terrifying happens. The RKV loop latches on, and suddenly, the universe is divided into blue and red halves, and Altair V is gone. They've entered a RELATIVISTIC INSTANCED DUNGEON! And the RKV, the capital-ship-sized chunk of automation, finally reveals itself. The minimaps on every HUD go blank, except for the bright red dot at the center of all of this: RKV "WITH YOUR NAME ON IT" PLANET-CLASS RELATIVISTIC KILLSHOT The heavy machine looks much like the other parts of IFO: Like a small model made large with creative camera angles. But the ancient superweapon, greebled with unknowable technologies and splattered with micro-debris, looks rather like a world-war-two-era submarine of all things, scaled up to far past the size of a skyscraper. One of the decks is actually already punched open, broken apart by some ancient piece of large debris, or perhaps the RKV was already used against a planet once before and this is the result. Whatever the case, this mysterious breach is available for investigation. So, too, are other segments of the craft. The engines are inactive aside from small adjustments, but someone could breach that. There's also another segment with actual apparent windows, which may be worth investigating purely because the idea of this thing being inhabited is absurd. But people had better get inside fast! This might not have an external defense mechanism, but instead of that, the problem is the micro-debris in space! Someone with a lot of perception or analytical skill may need to help plot a path through the oncoming storm of tiny chunks of spacerock and such, gleaming a brilliant blue as they approach before turning to deep, dramatic red, deadly as bullets. Besides that, a tank to provide cover against the barrage and help the others slip inside will be crucial!
Alexis Maaka	Well this was terrifying. Maaka uses what she brought along for this op: The MOKIN IGS, a gunship with a raptor styled set of nose-art that flies easily and deftly along the field of debris. She teleports aboard the vessel, after leaping out of a breach. As she gets set up, the gunship takes off after the RKV, making a beeline toward the massive breach. "This is Durandal, I'm on-station, heading for the breach to get in. Might be big enough inside we can actually fit fighters in there." She says over comm, evading or blowing up bits of debris to clear the route.
Kyoko Takada	Kyoko opens up some connection invites, one for everyone in the party, and starts running a back-end routine to push any sensor data sent to her together into one map. From that, movement charts do the easy prediction of where things are going, in the scant moments before they impact, and the rather more complicated business of converting those projections into something that can be read by each of the possibly disparate, connected systems of the group. All in all, it's still business as usual, and barely takes any time to do. Then she lifts her mecha up and starts moving it toward the breach, dodging around debris paths on the way. She's not sure how the relativistic physics are supposed to work here--that's too far outside her field--but she'll figure it out like she figured out moving in the first place.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette doesn't have much use for her boarding craft here- it offers little personal protection, or indeed, anything but offense and a vehicle to board enemies. That seems both redundant and unnecessarily destructive here. When she's displaced onto the RKV's hull by the inertial clamps, she immediately orients herself on foot, anchoring to the hull with electromagnetic spells... and draws her limb mounted blades, back turned to the rest of the party and eyes glinting ominously as she peers off into the distance. "Incoming! Everyone, pick an entrance and get inside! I'll try to reduce the sandblasting until--" Her words are cut off by an abrupt flickering motion as she carves through a small piece of space debris, shattering it into shrapnel that's carefully deflected up and away from the rest of the party and into empty space. "-- everyone else is safe." The meteorites are predictable enough, if terrifyingly fast: she can't deflect all of them, but by figuring out where her party members are likely to be and selectively destroying the debris with trajectories on an intercept with them, she can thin the neverending hail substantially! So begins her peculiar dance: skating across the ship's surface, swinging at projectiles that are still miles away so that they hit her blades mid-swipe in a kind of protective bunt.
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima isn't exactly inhabiting her body right now, so instead of the typical G-force effects of blackout or redout, everything just goes /weird/ for a moment. <<...Okay, I don't want to feel that again. Ever. Let's get inside, Durandal. Somethings sandblasting off my hull.>> She fires her RIG's oversized thrusters, following the ship named after her.
Silica	Silica holds onto the control yoke as she's pressed back into the flight seat. "Neeever getting used to that." she muses to herself. And then WHAM! <<Field down 28%.>> "Okay, we need to get inside, fast. Those microdebris fragments are more deadly than anything the NPCs can throw at us!" She pulls over, rolling through a cluster of those micro rocks, before gunning the engine to close with the RKV itself. "I'm going in through the big breach in the side." she adds, weaving as best she can through the bipolar fussilade, pouring the energy from her weapon bank into the shield and engines. <<Field at 132%. 99%, 82%.>> The bright blue flares coming from each impact. The Computer opens its comm lines and sensor feeds to Kyoko's access request, feeding in data as the Cait Sith pilots her craft through the DANGER ZOOOONE.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki peers at Tomoe, a slightly hurt expression on her face. "You're not having fun?" she asks, sounding a little disappointed. SHE'S having a blast, but now it might be a guilty sort of pleasure. Still she sticks by Tomoe, who probably has better shields than she does. Yuuki's craft has neither heavy armor nor powerful sensors. Not terrible by any means, but nowhere near exceptional. She focuses her attention forward, into the oncoming storm, trying to give direction as best she can. She doesn't have huge sensor range but she's quick to react, so she should be able to give at least some warning so others can focus on the more immediate concerns. By preference Yuuki's inclined to head for the breach with Silica, but she'll stick to Tomoe's side before anything else.
Tomoe	Tomoe reply is, "Not really? I surived the death game and though being forced into things like that is over. Cardinal had other ideas and has turned portions of my world into /one/. None of us asked for this or wanted this. To get what I wanted for myself at the expense of my world's well being isn't right...I'm not going to throw stones but for me with people's lives on the line, when they never signed up for it? Isn't my idea of fun." She however charges on in with her Loader the very basic one mind you and she sees the boss? Ya that would be the boss from the looks of it. HEr Hud goes blank save for a single massive dot. She kicks her her loader's thrusters and is heading for the WWII inspired boss with her spear out and ready, an massive energy blade snapping to life as she does to to get inside as Silica said and she'll carve her way in if needed.
Kirito	After a lurching devil of a transition, Kirito's left with a hell of a view of... The Spriggan, in a rare show since this endeavor began, sprouts a grin. "Pretty cool ship design." He can appreciate it! Even if he'd rather be out flying with his own wings instead of this clunky, oversized mecha. But warning klaxons blare as he approaches. The Black swordsman's a bit too late to avoid being belted by a few chunks of debris coming in WAY too fast. He swerves away from the field with a curse-like hiss and yowls over the comms, "It's like an obstacle course!" Dodging such a barrage could maybe be doable on his lonesome. But in the lunky, oversized Loader that he's only so good at controlling... yeah, no. "Here goes nothing...!" But he dives for the breach with everything he's got, confident that getting in quickly and avoiding this will be his best option. The Loader spins dizzily in an ungainly pattern with milliseconds to spare through several clusters of flashing micro-debris shots, each time a narrow miss to the machine's vitals. Instead it's peppered in less important areas... Basically the same strategy Kirito used in Gun Gale when charging at opponents. Allow damage to extremities, only avoid anything too terrible, and just GET THROUGH it with all due speed!
Septette Arcubielle	With everyone else accounted for, Septette sprints along the hull- towards the rear of the vessel! A trio of drones materialize behind her, facing backwards but matching her pace, to intercept incoming meteorites with a barrage of precisely-aimed elemental bolts, backed up with Hibiki's advanced targeting data. "I think that's everyone I need to be protecting," she calls out. "Anticipating minimal threats inside the RKV- checking out the engines myself. I get the feeling we'll need someone out here to ultimately slow it down." And, failing that, she still wants to get a first-hand look at just how the thrusters on this thing operate!
Staren	And suddenly... They're going at relativistic speed. It's incredible to think about. Staren could stare around and take it in... And then there's a minor damage warning on his HUD as some space dust smacks into the Star Hawk. <"We better get inside quick!"> He flies quickly to the breach, transforming into the shorter hybrid mode to more easily fit inside. Trying to shoot down debris at relativistic speed doesn't sound very winnable... although, perhaps CARDINAL has altered the physics of that too? Probably. If not, it may well recognize that people have interpreted as a game challenge and START. So. They need to stop this thing. They may also need to fight off the indiginous mobs. It wouldn't be a dungeon without mobs! Having a moment to just breathe and consider how to proceed, Staren decides what they need first is information. He looks around the area inside the breach for a computer. If he doesn't find one, time to start exploring, in the general direction of the engines. If there's room for him to keep moving the mecha around inside, great -- if not, he's prepared with other options.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki's fighter is configured for, above all else, maneuverability. She dips and darts the little ship, rolling and twirling it like an extension of her body. She takes a few glancing hits but nothing serious, her core remaining safe throughout the maneuvers just as if this were Alfheim Online and she in her native form. She delays slightly in getting into the breach, letting those less-defensive than her go through first. She doesn't waste time though, flying in adroitly when there's room for her to zip in a gap in the flow of loaders and fighters. Once inside Yuuki pops the cockpit and bounces out, drawing her coilblade and preparing to repel boarders! Oh wait, they're the boarders. Preparing to repel ... defenders? To pirate the vessel? "Arrrr!" she cries out her battle readiness.
Starbound Flotilla	RUSH MOMENT. It's time to tear ass through space at an ungodly fraction of the speed of light. The shining blues and reds of the exterior are deadly. Luckily, each member of the raid party have their own methods of combating this; analysis and scanning to buff the group's evasion, evasion itself to dodge the danger itself using powerful reflexes and swift action, tanking the massive damage of the shots into way more manageable impacts, or simply counterattacking the incoming chunks of space debris, all have their own benefits. Maaka clears a path for herself and Yumiko with predictive fire enhanced by Kyoko, Septette manages to use that predictive knowledge and pathing savvy to tank much of the damage (even as her craft slowly collapses around her), and Silica finds her light armoring and use of that data analytics will let her reach the inside if she can floor that throttle. Yuuki, though, dances dramatically; while the dance is likely to cause a little bit of g-force pain, it's quite enough to get her to the breach. Tomoe, like Septette, finds fewer problems dealing with tanking the impacts. She has her choice of two spots to breach the inside, if she doesn't want to take the existing breach. Those windows and that engine are both points worth slicing into... Carefully. Can't blow this up! Kirito is quite similar, though he lacks the sheer tanking power. The smaller loader means he gets peppered a little less, and the savvy willingness to part with some redundant systems in the extremities lets him get through into the breach! Similar to Staren, who simply barrels through, sustaining the damage as he goes. Each make it to their objective. Now protected from the exterior hazard, they must survive the interior danger and accomplish their goal!
Alexis Maaka	Maaka taps into Kyoko's targeting assistance, having no space telepathy to help her target for her, and she makes a ninety degree turn as she enters the ship's insides. She was right, the ship is HUGE on the inside as well as out, giving her plenty of room to maneuver her gunship through the insides. G-force diffusion systems let her manage the impact of stopping this hard and turning so suddenly. Then she breaks out the boosters, having her rocket her way towards the internal corridors and pathways, her ship making barrel rolls and sharp turns with expert precision. It's not much different than maneuvering her car in the middle of rush hour, just with additional axis to contend with.
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima does her best to stay within the 'cleared' corridor, but sensor nets aren't 100 percent perfect. There's a BANG, and a shock runs through Yumi's system as the last segment of her loader's tail disappears, spiralling off into the void. Her vision blurs momentarily as the biofeedback hits her through the neural interface. <<Frag!>> She picks up the pace a bit, pumping more thrust into her jets as she shoots towards the breach in the hull. Once she's inside, she dis-engages herself from the Loader, which seems to lose the fluid motions it had had when she was plugged in. Something warm is on her face... Drek. Just what she needs. She wipes the blood leaking from her nose off with her hand, cramming her helmet on and activating a nanoskin before depressurizing the 'cockpit' and climbing out. She's also wearing a smaller version of the Loader's maneuvering jets to keep her form getting stranded in the middle of a room. <<I'm going on foot, my optics are pretty fogged from the dust.>> She bounces after Maaka, leaping and rebounding off walls with precise bursts of speed, an occasional jet from her thrusters keeping her on course.
Tomoe	Tomoe pulls back at the well timed warning from Septette she pulls off from her attack, and will power the weapon down but will use the shaft for tanking when she needs to it can at least parry things right? She halts from doing further damage and is going to make for one of of the already existing entry points. She will make for it, she doe keep an eye on Kirito as she keeps up on her attempt to make for one of the existing breaches. With what Captain Laika said? That helps Tomoe figure out what she needs to do, and for now she's going to try to get inside through an existing entry point tanking what she can on the way.
Silica	Silica's craft peels away inside the big breach in the side of the capital ship's hull, out of the line of fire of those deadly microids. Now the initial danger is clear, she equalizes power, and begins an area sweep with her sensor array. "Leo-1. I'm inside. Beginning area scan. Hibiki, I'm routing data to you now.". She cycles through her controls, and activates the Tight Quarters Maneuvering System. Colloqually called 'All Range Mode' as a nod to certain other games. The engine system levers out to about a 30 degree angle, and the maneuvering thrusters expand, giving more lateral force for tight maneuvering. "Computer, deploy primary weapon bank in Semi-tracking mode." <Semi-Tracking Enabled. Tight Quarters Maneuvering System online.>
Starbound Flotilla	Inside the main breach, where most have gathered -- including Captain Laika -- they find something rather strange. The interior is a mess of computation systems, logic gates clearly inscribed all around, like someone hand-crafted something in some kind of block-building game. It looks like it was built to survive the rigors of this purely by virtue of having such massive computation systems that even microdebris would be a small trouble. The huge, heavy blocks with the logic gates on them look like they can be slid around on tracks and rails by the small tractor systems of each Swordfish and Loader. Staren's looking for a computer, well the fact is that he found one; the /entirety/ of With Your Name On It is a computer! In order to get this reprogrammed, the group is going to have to surge through all the dangerous interior and rearrange these things as they go. But that's not the only issue. A large chunk of some other massive spacecraft, which this RKV once slammed into, is stuck in the breach too. It looks like one of the Von Neumann probes, or at least was designed by the same race. But there's something rather wrong here. Whatever craft this RKV destroyed so long ago... Was infested with NEUROVORES!! The hibernating creatures are still aboard, and the tremendous, bulging masses of slick rubbery black egg-like constructs boiling up on the surface are wobbling as they detect the disturbances of new life... They erupt with swarms of <INFESTED ANCIENT CREATORS>, thin and elegant alien humanoids holding strange hard-light melee weapons; these aliens have been infected by neurovore cells, the horrible rubbery creatures locked onto where their head-stumps used to be. Some of them rush for ancient loader-like machines held inside their eggs, leaping inside with a far more intelligent eye than any Neurovore encountered before, and beginning to legitimately pilot them. They rush for the ship and loader pilots, while the hard-light melee aliens rush for those who have chosen to take things by foot, each blasting with strange and ancient powerful energies. Laika is already blasting away at the loader-like ancient machines carved in elegant white smart materials and engraved with stylish ceremonial aesthetic.
Yumiko Kojima	This is the first time Yumi's encountered Neurovores. And yeah... They're a lot scarier up close. Fortunately... The ones chasing her are only armed with melee weapons! So that helps somewhat. SMG in one hand and a heavy pistol in the other, she opens up, explosive and incendiary bullets streaking toward the monsters. Luckily, at this scale, collateral damage shouldn't be TOO much of a problem...
Yuuki Konno	"Arrrr! There be space-blubbers on this here ship!" Yuuki shrieks in enthusiasm, either getting way too into being on a pirate mission or considering herself now a pirate due to working for Laika. Brandishing her coilsword she leaps into action, engaging the hard-light melee neurovores with her usual brand of enthusiastic mayhem. And yeah, while Yuuki's no slouch at brain-challenging puzzles, she prefers the cuisinart school of problem-solving. Let her murder monsters. She'll leave the problem-solving to someone else for now.
Silica	Silica catches sight of the hostiles. <Eyes on, multiple infected aliens. They're getting in loaders!> she radios, then tracks over to begin firing with her main bank weapons. She's kept the gattling laser on the port nacelle, but swapped the Capital Cracker torpedo out for a heavy duty boltgun. This fires metal spikes using a magnetic accelerator, should be good at punching through Loader armour. She junks her fighter to cover Hibiki from attack, using the ship itself to absorb the incoming fire and return shots back down range. <Alert, Shield System overloading.> "Reroute auxillary power, initiate emergency purge of the reactor core! Begin Emergency Repair!" She keeps firing, but the automated system is mostly doing the work, as Silica dives into a QTE to reroute power and get her damaged ship back in fighting shape. Hopefully she has enough time to complete the repairs, because she's a sitting duck while doing this.
Staren	The... the whole thing is a computer?! Or at least, a digital logic circuit. Staren highly doubts the players are supposed to understand enough about computers to edit one... He tells Dawn to start mapping the logic gates they see so he can figure out what this circuit does. But then it turns out: Neurovores! Staren hesitates for a second. He doesn't want to risk damaging the ship with weaponsfire... Then again, it's a game level. Those usually can't be damaged unless it's a game mechanic. So he opens fire with laser and railgun, trying to kite the neurovore-loaders and keep them at a distance. If it looks like his missed shots are damaging the ship, he'll have to change tactics.
Kyoko Takada	It seems like it's finally time for Kyoko to shoot something. Sadly, she's not that good at it. She's probably the worst shot here, with the possible exception of people who don't use guns. Fortunately, she has an aim-assist system. It's cobbled together and untested, but it lets her unlimber her gun and actually hit moving targets, focusing only on those that get close enough to really worry her despite the presence of teammates like Silica. It's not going to do much besides give her a little more safety and peace of mind, but others here should have the swarms handled... probably? She's not sure how many of them infest the ship, and it does seem on the gigantic side. Apart from "not getting blown up," Kyoko's immediate goal is to map the ship. Her "wings" spread and the sensor drones shoot out in all directions, flying down every path they can take, with only a few staying in the immediate environment to get different perspectives on the current fight. She can't deal with tactical analysis and everything else at once, so a better party buff than enemy awareness will have to wait. What she wants, straight off, is to get a map that includes all of this block puzzle, however far it extends. Only after they can see the whole thing can they start solving it, after all.
Starbound Flotilla	Septette is going to deal with her own issue, rather a bit more directly. While the others will be restoring the main systems of the ship and asserting their own control, by bypassing that core issue of getting control of this thing's engines long before they slingshot around the upcoming black hole, they can make sure the full control assertion is far less painful to deal with. And when she reaches it... It's shielded against the micro-debris -- in both the sense of having the bulk of the ship's hull blocking a large amount of the incoming pain, and the sense of having an obvious field projection preventing things from entering at high speeds -- and she can get to work. What exactly work entails is something entirely different to think through though. The back thrusters are a wide array of multiple exhaust emission ports, emitting some lethally radioactive and hot substances at various points around the array to perform small adjustments every few seconds, meaning that based on the kinetic patterns of the movement or disruption of the ship's path by debris, Septette will be dealing with the nearby "terrain" gushing vapors at her that would turn human flesh into a bunch of all sorts of creative carbon isotopes with only a moment of exposure, at the kind of speeds usually reserved for industrial steelcutting waterjets. To call it dangerous is an understatement, but to call it impossible to survive would be an overstatement; the array of stuff going on is lethal, but Septette may be able to find a way to get to a central segment of the thrust unit, where the RING OF FIRE protects, in an unintentional way, the area where power flows to the thrusters, where thick wire-like constructs blossom out of the center of the craft like they're emerging from the spine.
Alexis Maaka	"Ugh." Maaka growls in disgust, lighting up Neurovores with her gunship's ventral turret, firing high-velocity slugs at the blobby hordes. She notices Yumiko hopping out of the loader, and she swears under her breath. <<GET ON!>> She orders, stopping and pulling up towards her, the secondary cockpit's hatch opening up for the younger cyborg to climb aboard in z-gee.
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima kicks off a gate just in time to avoid a volley of incoming fire, the grenade launcher under the barrel of her SMG coughing and sending a HE grenade towards one of the Neuro-Loaders, before Alexis' shout comes over the comms. She grumbles a bit internally, before launching herself into a flip and slotting neatly into the ship's gunner cockpit as it opens, thudding into the seat and strapping in. <<I was doing just fine, you know...>> She pulls off her helmet, unreeling a fiber optic cable from the console and slipping it into her datajack, before her body goes limp again and the chin turret and a few of the weapons arrays Alexis was neglecting spring into life, hosing down the softer targets to provide her friends with fire support.
Tomoe	Tomoe makes her way into the breach and it's doing well enough so far, she'll move ahead in her Loader keeping her eyes open for more trouble and paying a heedful mind to not wrecking it further. Well as much as she can help. She looks as more alien things come after them she'll put her spear to work against those thing as her Loader will attempt to try and keep the local mobs under control. Silicia just urges her o, to act faster trying to keep them from getting to the loaders, or making use of her spear to take the loaders out before they can get into them. Still this means Tomoe is getting all up in their grill. "Keep them from the loaders if you can! Better yet take the loaders out if your able to!" Tomoe is putting out a lot of taunting as she does this, she will be making herself quite the target.
Starbound Flotilla	Yumiko's new direct contact with the neurovore at least makes it clear that they can take damage; their HP bars go down just the same way that any other monster's might go down, but they're /tough/ sons of bitches. The infestation's boost in powerlevel is dangerous to deal with, and whatever the Creators initially were, they were already pretty strong with their fancy hard-light out-of-genre gear. Explosive and incendiary rounds find a great deal of success, since they evoke just a little of the Science weakness neurovores have, but she's still going to be dealing with a tough rush, especially the ones bearing down on her with hard light polearms! Her escape is a smart one, since this lets her use her skills at a higher level while leaving dealing with the downsides -- the enemy loaders -- up to Maaka! Maaka, for her part, has to contend with a wide variety of plasma bolts lobbed around from that nest, a dangerous source of damage inside here. Laika, for her part, has already moved her loader to latch onto Maaka's craft and take cover, seeming to need a moment of protection from the pair!
Kirito	Since he's already in his Loader, Kirito focuses on the Neurovores that are similarly-equipped. The Black Swordsman grips his controls with renewed dedication. Although a glance around the strange innards gives him a pretty good idea of what'll be required to progress. "Logic puzzles, huh?" THAT has his attention. But so does the challenge laid out in front of him... "About time. I was looking for something to vent a little frustration on!" He admits to himself... and the skill he shows manipulating the controls increases a few notches! Kirito is a battle-holic. If it doesn't have to do with one of his interests... yeah. He'll not be at his best, will he? The black-painted melee machine falls in alongside Tomoe and charges for the enemy Loaders, pile bunkers ready to crush and thoroughly skewer everything in their way!
Alexis Maaka	Maaka shrugs at Yumiko. "Just make sure you decontaminate yourself. The ship won't clean itself later." She says, before she feels Laika's loader grab onto her ship from bellow. "Oh hey, passengers. Hold on there, Laika!" She radios the russian space doge, keeping steady as she and Yumiko let loose with MG fire on the Neurovores. High-velocity corrosive rounds ought to tear them apart on impact thanks to the way guns work in this game. Of course, some Loaders begin to make their way towards the ship. "Oh hell, HANG ON!" She banks to the left hard to evade the Loaders, and then fires heavy cannons point-blank at the infested machines.
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima can't nod since her body's off right now, but... <<DOnt' worry, I'll foam myself as soon as I can take a break from shooting.>> The omnidirectional vision granted her by the ship's sensor package lets her spot Laika coming, and she targets the spinning barrels of the chin turret to drive back the alien menace, micromissiles springing from launch tubes and following her aimpoints.
Starbound Flotilla	Laika says something in russian to Yuuki, the kind of something that sounds like it was probably just a little bit like rolling her eyes, but also something that sounds like it was doing a bit of encouraging banter for her part as well. Yuuki's inclination to slip out leaves her well under the radar of the enemy loaders, meaning all she has to contend with are the vast hordes of enemy melee warriors. This is a far more classic SAO situation, and does just what the game engine was originally best at: Presenting tough but resolvable conflicts in melee. While she's outside the attention of those enemy loaders, though, Kirito and Tomoe draw it. ESPECIALLY Tomoe! They don't have to contend with any of the violent zombified warriors thanks to Yuuki's effective clearing, but they do have to deal with the plasma lobbers. These dangerous pilots and their pseudo-loaders engage the pair in both long and short-range combat, with everything from ranged plasma sniping that needs full use of Tomoe's tanking or Kirito's puzzled-out cheating method, to short-range flamethrower-like pseudo-melee, requiring far more ranging and zoning and maneuvering in orientations. Luckily, so many of them all focusing on Tomoe, Kirito can easily flank! They're going to have to fight hard, because Silica just pulled in and is trying to repair her ship! DEFEND SILICA from any assailing loaders to ensure she has enough time to boost out another few dozen percent of her ship's HP.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette simply stands at the back of the ship for a few seconds, watching the engine's thrusters fire and soaking up as much data about their patterns as possible. She certainly doesn't have Hibiki's long-range scanning or information-gathering capabilities, but once the data's plainly in front of her, her capacity to analyze it is still formidable: after watching a cycle and a half of the thrusters' patterns and correlating it with Hibiki's debris-scans, she's tentatively extrapolated a complex polyrhythm to their arrangements, contingent on the RKV's place in its slingshot-orbit as well as its immediate surroundings. Unfortunately, the next time that all of the thrusters will 'align' and cool down synchronously to allow completely safe passage for a few moments is likely to be... in several hours, after the next black hole transit. That's not an acceptable timeframe. She'll have to run it hot, picking a moment where most- but not all- of the jets have cooled to a lull! Three... Two... One. The little android takes a running leap off of the hull, twisting in the air to keep her eyes on the central control circuit. Her color-coded elemental drones follow, leashed to close proximity, and dart in and out of the jets. The first two that fire near her, she simply weaves out of the way, dancing around their deadly beams by creatively shifting her center of balance using her extendable arm-blades and inhuman flexibility. The third... The third beam is narrowly deflected by her red drone, shifting its horrible ionizing blast off into space by a few degrees and frying the drone's arcane circuitry in the process- but it holds out just long enough for Septette to slip past before the beam punches through her crackling shield! Finally, she alights safely next to the spinal-mount control node and presses one hand to it, closing her eyes and channeling a complex spell through her yellow drone. It should produce a disruptive electromagnetic field, preventing the node from receiving orders from the rest of the ship!
Starbound Flotilla	Staren and Kyoko are getting a lot of data here. Kyoko's data-gathering is far more wide and broad than Staren's is, but Staren's own expertise is a little bit more suited to reassembling the data. Kyoko's going to need to summarize a bit of this though. The blocks are an arm's length on each side at least, and there's enough of them in here that entire huge greebled collections of them are going to need to be moved. If she can summarize each module's rough logical functions, Staren and his engineering focus could redirect the navigation hardcode to shift the entire RKV into a halting pattern, so that it no longer is sensitive to killshot signals or makes any effort to begin its acceleration protocols; that would be enough to make it workable for Laika's purposes, at least, after Septette's done at the engines. That's not to say that the two are going to have it easy. Tomoe's taunting the majority of the enemies, but there's still enough incoming that Kyoko will find it more than beneficial -- lifesaving, actually -- to calculate incoming fire patterns such that Staren will have a better and easier time taking down foes before their internal fight consumes them enough to prevent proper re-engineering! Hopefully the two of them together can get this stuff all rearranged down the length of this nightmare machine. Especially since the breach is the only area that seems heavily populated by enemies. Kyoko's analysis indicates that there's likely far less neurovore density deeper inside, and they can move further in to work on this with far fewer deadly distractions if they can get a gap in the battle.
Silica	Silica's eyes flick from point to point, hands dancing across the screen taking up her view. Clapping ports closed when they start to slip, opening ports and closing broken cable links when they start to leak power. "Just a little bit more, Cover me!" she calls, arms beginning to blur as the QTE starts to quicken. Most IFO players can't keep up with the sheer reflexes needed to get the most out of an Emergency Repair skill. Silica has the reflexes to squeeze the most out of it before she hesitates for a splitmilisecond and loses the beat. The ERS shuts off, and all systems boot back up, the renewed shield flaring back to life and taking a splash of plasma. "Leo-1, back in!" She guns the engine, lifting up out of the main melee, and starts to strafe the pseudo-loaders with her laser gattling, aiming for the cockpits of the loaders with the bolt driver. The incoming plasma bolts glance off her shields as she rolls the craft, using the momentum to add more force to the deflection, sending the bolts splashing harmlessly against the walls, or straight back at their source. Kyoko's call for help gets her attention. "Clearing the road!" She diverts power from engines to weapons, and unloads a barrage to clear out the enemies blocking Kyoko's path, hovering nearly stationary for a few moments.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki grins in reply to Laika's look. Hopefully the cosmodog doesn't interpret it as a snarl! The dog-woman may be weirdly foreign, but she's also Yuuki's sort of person. NPC perhaps, but one with enough personality to count as a person as far as the little Imp goes.R Out of the loader and fighting on foot, this is Yuuki's element. Literally so if the battle zone is dark, but in the middle of a swarm of enemies is the sort of thing she likes best. Being in a big hulking loader really isn't her style. Sure it's cool and all, but she prefers to MOVE! And move she does. She's badly outnumbered by the Neurovores, but that just means she has a target-rich environment! Never staying in one place, she makes it difficult for the melee fighters to know when she's close enough to swing at. She uses one against the next, jumping up on one and stomping its face, driving it back into the next, sweeping another's leg and sending it into a fourth, that sort of thing. The whole time her sciency coilblade is tearing through rubbery flesh with every sweep. She's somewhat vulnerable, true, but she relies on her scrapper armor to protect her vitals. Like Kirito, she's long adopted the technique of enduring glancing blows while accomplishing her objectives, only parrying or throwing her body aside to protect against strikes effectively-aimed that would be a true vital threat.
Starbound Flotilla	Laika seems to make appreciative Russian dog noises when she braces against Maaka's craft. firing from cover dramatically while the two in their vehicle make quick work of the enemies. In this case, it's not just the loaders that suffer badly from the impacts of the corrosive rounds, it's also the pods that are amid hatching; this allows them to eat through the infested Creator craft, as well as tending to evoke some of the same damage buffs against Neurovores that other science type damage does. Explosives, guided ones at that, rip a lot of them apart and mean that any of the ones that escape tend to get cleared out. By the time this barrage is done, and by the time Maaka recovers from either the stress of dodging or the stress of taking the return plasma fire that has by now died out, most of the rest of the combat issues are going to be solved! At least, the other group will have primarily handled it. "You two. Can you clear that chunk of ship out of here? Controlled detonations, tractors, manual loader shoving, your pick." Laika's calling out from her position of cover on the thing, already rocketing out to get to work using her Loader superstrength to shove the huge shard of hull away from the RKV. Now it's a matter of clearing that chunk out of the ship. And presumably tossing it out towards the black hole they're going to swing around, if they're worried about leaving this busted chunk of a ship out in space.
Kirito	The stupid programing choice that IFO's makers allowed to pervade everything? Kirito is keen on exploiting the crap out of that. It allows his lunky-lackadaisical (compared to him on foot, anyways) Loader to pull off some stunning evasions and dive under shots to deliver punishing blows from the Pile Bunkers, while taking very little damage in return! He grunts and inhales hard with each blow dealt or received... "HrrrrrrrruuuuuuuUuuuuuUUUUUUAAAAAAFGHGGGGGHHHH!!" And with Silica's livelihood now in question, a level of berserker-like ferocity fills his motions. The Black Swordsman's melee-loader steps heavily but swiftly and certainly with an ever-growing show of skill as he grows more and more familiar with the controls and timing. This is, after all, his first REAL COMBAT with real enemies 'on foot' with this thing, and he's performing WAY better now that he doesn't have to worry about things that a normal swordsman wouldn't too much. "Out of our way, Neurovores!"
Alexis Maaka	Maaka's ship has some sort of undermounted clamps that snap Laika's loader into place, like it's wearing a backpack spaceship. The gunship takes off speedily, firing off cannons and MG bursts all over with omnidirectional turret controls. Direct-input modules are awesome like that. She heads near the obstruction, aiming her cannons at the wreck. "Hold on, firing off!" She charges off a burst of mass-driver fire, blasting open the wreckage like she was clearing out chunks of rock. That may be what these cannons were designed for, in-universe!
Kyoko Takada	Things are still pretty hectic in here, even with enemies getting shot down. Kyoko's scans indicate that they're currently at the point of highest enemy concentration--perhaps sneaking in by cutting a new entrance would have been a better plan? She hasn't that much history in battlefields, but this has been a learning experience. A note for next time. Of more immediate importance, the enemies are concentrated here, but aren't /all/ here. That means there are still reinforcements, replacements for those that get shot down. But if she can break through, then she can get somewhere with fewer distractions, and shift focus from survival to completing the mission. Silica gets up and running again, and clears the way with a barrage of fire. Kyoko's quick to launch through the breach at full power, hard enough to need to brake hard in the air once she's through. Maneuvering will be another skill to get down just right, but later. The sensor drones she initially launched into the battlefield are still there, pushed into the walls or corners and giving everyone on the network a set of overhead eyes to keep tabs on the situation without her. Focus time. If someone comes along with her, it'll be easier, and she can get in a direct interface to increase the processing efficiency. Even without that, there's nothing but to do it. She takes the full map and starts an automatic process to start converting it into more sensible pieces, making and confirming guesses on what the components are for, and then building those into the larger picture of where everything fits together. With alien technology (even if it's a game's block-moving puzzle on some level), she's not sure how easy this will be, and so there's little she can just leave to the AI to work out. Pattern-recognition systems work best when you already know what the patterns are supposed to look like, and there's no one in her world's corporations who would really build a machine like this, because no one is quite that crazy. She sends regular updates in off-to-the-side notifications along with the map data, so anyone else can take a look at it as her map starts getting annotated and transformed.
Yumiko Kojima	Yumiko Kojima sweeps the rotary cannon fire back and forth across the floor, sweeping the neurovores back, until finally there's a brief moment of respite. Maaka blows the debris out of the way, and Yumi stands ready to hose anything down that's on the other side. Or rather... Sits ready. Considering her body is currently a spaceship. Jumping into things is kinda weird, when you really think about it.
Starbound Flotilla	Septette's elegant and stylish horrible fire inferno ballet means that she manages to essentially severe the spine out of this massive thing, at least temporarily before self-repair things get kicked into gear by the restoration of the inner workings. Now, if she does her own manipulation on this, she can hopefully use the upcoming black hole to slow them down! Which will be a rather surreal experience. She can see, at least, the obvious spatial warping that indicates the exact point of a black hole. If she applies electrical magic to the right conduits at the right time, she can fire any of the maneuvering thrusters. But now, in this case, what sort of technique COULD she use to slow this down and bring it back in towards Altair V? Hopefully she hasn't skimped on her relativistic kinematics knowledge, because this is going to be an absolute nightmare of a swing.
Staren	Oh shoot, they ARE damaging the ship! That's not good... fortunately, once optimal firing patterns are calculated, he doesn't have to risk as many misses. "This continues deeper through the whole ship?! Geeze, it's hard enough to manage WITH our computers helping us, how were normal players supposed to do this? I guess CARDINAL is adapting to us..." A concerning thought. Fortunately, once it's decided to just push past, Staren's well equipped to do so and help clear a path for Kyoko. Then they can work in (relative) piece. "Ugh, logic gates, logic gates, logic gates! Until we can find a sensor or FTL comm reciever or engine control or SOMETHING, how can we tell what any of this is /doing/?! And how is damage not ruining everything?!" Staren tries to rub his chin, but his helmet's in the way. "Perhaps some sort of module-based design, with redundant modules and some circuitry to handle failing inputs and outputs... yeah, that's probably it. We'll need to find the transitions between the modules so we can cut off the ones we don't modify. It'd take too long to change /all/ of them..."
Silica	Silica vents heat, popping all the heat sinks at once to purge them rapidly, her ship becoming engulfed in a rippling haze of superheated coolant gas. She overrides the autoshutdown, and flushes new coolant through the systems. Redlines shift to yellow, then back down to green as heat stabilizes. She's going to need to finetooth comb the systems after this to make sure nothing got broken from overheating.. but for now, everything's working well enough. Kyoko moves off after she clear the way, and as Yuuki says she'll come help as well, Silica turns her craft to strafe around the imp's current location, aiming to cut off the reinforcements so Yuuki can finish off the ones already in melee. "I'll come pick you up Miss Zekken!" she calls out, swinging her craft down so Yuuki can hop on the wing, handholds popping out of the fuselage for the imp to hang onto. "Hold on!" She turns the craft, then guns the engine, moving to catch up with Kyoko.
Yuuki Konno	Yuuki nods, though it's not clear if Silica can see her or not. "Just give me a lift back to my fighter, and I'll help give cover fire!" she says cheerfully, taking the opportunity to fly at Silica's fighter and cling to a convenient and likely entirely undignified handhold. But immensely fun!
Tomoe	Tomoe is just keeping the enemies on her she'll hack and slash but there's a whole lot of them comming. She will trust in the rest of the team to keep the monsters cut down in a timly order and hopefully be able to fix the objective in the mean time things are however getting more tense for her and she starts to spin her mahcine into a small tornaod of blade trying to keep all the horde or as much as possible on her.
Starbound Flotilla	Silica's restored! IFO experience has given her a /fantastic/ ability to deal with these random QTEs that show up in so many situations. Also the fact that QTEs are actual Star Trek styles shenanigans in need of regular application of tools to various panels and such, so the experience is very literally transferable. This means that she can properly begin engaging more loaders, enough for Kyoko to get clear! And meaning that the rest of the group can set up their own defenses to focus on drawing in more of the enemies! With this state, Yuuki finds herself with enough Loader backup that she should be able to disengage from the already-thinning melee hord, which she's torn through using her coilblade's SCIENCE damage type quite effectively, not that they were having an easy time tracking her to begin with. Kirito and Tomoe find the final rush, which is the growths on the huge hull shard. Given that now the shard is beginning to get pushed or cut out of the craft, the infectious growths are trying to latch tentacles onto the hull of the RKV!! If Tomoe's tornado can move into those, or if Kirito can pile-bunker enough of these awful creatures to let him cut through the tethers. And if he can make sure to time it right during the very moment where they're rushing past that black hole...
Septette Arcubielle	After studying the control node's structure for a few moments, Septette materializes yellow glowing magical circles around her wrists and plunges her hands into the guts of the machine. Her eyes shut tight as she brute-forces the thruster controls, physically bypassing the controls rather than meaningfully 'hacking' them. One by one, the engines reluctantly shudder to life under her arcane control. "Everyone, please fasten your seatbelts," she deadpans via radio. The original gravitational slingshot maneuver intended by the RKV would've taken it around the black hole in a clockwise path, harnessing the black hole's own immense momentum to accelerate itself. To brake it meaningfully, they'll need to skim dangerously close to their point of no return on the opposite direction- counterclockwise. And to adjust course to get there at this point... Those hideously powerful directional thrusters flare again, tilting the rear of the ship at a precarious fishtailing angle. Sparks fly from the engines as they prepare for a roguish maneuver never intended by whatever dignified precursors constructed this vessel. Off in the distance, the black hole approaches. "Drifting is go. I repeat, drifting is go."
Kyoko Takada	Kyoko is multitasking. Sort of! It's more like she's managing resources, and those resources are in the form of work-time. Cables snake out from hidden parts of her machine, and plug in to Silica's, tethering the two together and establishing a high-speed connection to let her use some of the other machine's system processing power for her own work. In turn, she reroutes a few things and sets up a connection between her home server and Septette, already in contact thanks to the sensor networking, tossing yet more processing power her way. The actual orbital calculations are beyond her, but the home server has a basic (astro)physics database and a lot of raw power, temporarily at Septette's disposal, along with the learning AIs Kyoko once described as "about as smart as worker bees."
Silica	Silica drops Yuuki off near the other girl's fighter. She listens to what the others are planning, and rams up her All Range Mode unit to max, to try and take the edge off of the upcoming maneuver. "Miss Zekken, ramp your TQMS to max, it might help a little, but if they miscalculate just a little bit... well..." she pauses a moment. "It was nice knowing you." She turns and moves to link up with Kyoko, providing fire support, and giving all the spare CPU time she can let go to Kyoko's calculations.
Starbound Flotilla	The answer to Staren's question is simple, and it's going to be provided in the entirely out-of-character context of narration: Every MMO raid gets boring if there's sixty four people doing the same piece of content. This is ARG-scale MMO content. IFO's endgame content was only solved by three guilds because the final Cybersphere boss encounter required decryption hardware that still exists only in theory, and the guilds had to bribe ex-workers for codes. All of this is quite irrelevant to the actual problems afoot. The control centers, at least, are a lot easier to deal with, which is to say, a lot easier to find. Kyoko's mapping efforts are picking them up pretty effectively, thankfully, once they're clear and further in. Silica's help and Yuuki's cover helps get rid of the stray warriors that follow and which have spread out through the whole area in general, but this combat is light enough to present only a light pressure that would drive raiders to be on a certain kind of timelimit. But now that Staren is looking for the modules, he can get to work on this. Kyoko's data has formed just enough to recognize the borders and for Staren to get to work on making sure the ship itself won't fight the drift. He'd better do it fast, because it's starting!
Tomoe	Tomoe meets the final rush and cuts down many but there are quite a few for Kirito to go after and she keeps on fighting but there is the black hoke, she's not sure if they can make it out? She's not sure if they are going to make it. Killed by Cardinal, somehow she's not shocked thats how she'd meet her end. She feels oss about the idea odf not going alone but there's an idea and she's prayes that it work she's mutteing something some sort of prayer as she makes sure no mobs might foul up the rest of the party's plan to save them all.
Kirito	There's simply no way to describe Kirito's assault beyond 'wild fury.' His Loader moves in ways that few would pilot the machines, lurching in weird motions that most pilots would call unsustainable or imbalanced... all to tease out more and more speed and power in the machine's strikes. Even as blow after blow lands on his machine, he just redoubles his efforts more and more every single time Tomoe exposes a vulnerable moment. He's not going to lose here. Nor will he allow ANYTHING to happen to the rest he's joined for this crazy mission. The spriggan drives his machine far past its limits, risking a shutdown as he charges on in and attempts to push his foes beyond all hope with a massive combo of thrusts from the pile bunkers! "Good riddance to you monsters!"
Starbound Flotilla	The infested chunk falls away as the team of Maaka and Yumiko work hard on helping Laika out. It doesn't last long, though the tethers it's trying to grow snap and strain to keep it in place. It's only with the dedicated help from Kirito to clear out the monsters and free Laika to cut the flesh as it grows that the group manages to shove it away and to dislodge the entire chunk straight through the breach, out into space, and then down, down... Into the massive black hole they're drifting around. The chunk of ship emits a guttural organic scream over the radio that warps in frankly disturbing ways as its point of emission slowly sinks below the event horizon of that massive, awful hole in space. Meanwhile, the group slings close, but a gravitational drift is far different from a standard drift with standard inertia; the warping inertia creates a conflicting sense of both motionlessness and incredibly, deathly high speed turning. Mentally, one is keenly aware of the fact that the entire ship is currently doing asian racing techniques on an astrophysical scale. Physiologically, one is keenly aware of being mostly still in zero gravity, which also happens to be more gravity than any human being has ever truly experienced. The effect is somewhere between unnerving and nauseating. It's kind of terrible to experience. But the deed is done. The ship is drifting. Over the next period of time, the craft is going to swing hard around the opposite end of the black hole, and soon come to rest somewhere near Altair V by bleeding off all of its absolutely massive momentum straight into the black hole itself using careful application of thrust, finely calculated with Kyoko running every single one of Silica's CPU cycles while she keeps the core reconstruction free of all interference. This was a close as heck call. But when the last of the Neurovore swarm falls, the loot drops will be worth it. <<<BETA AGENT>>> ACQUIRED.
Septette Arcubielle	After delegating the continued work of manning the thrusters to her drones, Septette walks out onto the section of the hull facing the black hole- anchored solidly by her piton-like claws and magnetic pull, of course- and sits down, hands folded on her lap as she gazes up at the obscene obsidian sun. There's no nausea here. No malaise. Surprisingly little exhilaration, too, considering what just went down. Septette's overwhelmed with a sense of profound contemplative calm, as she often is after jobs like these, and she mentally picks over and processes the events of the mission for lessons that could be applied to the future. Maybe there was a better way to do this. Maybe there were plot threads or subquests they didn't grab. But they got what they came for, she reflects, and everyone gets to go home. "Well," she mutters under her breath, looking out at the hideous neurovore core as it plummets into the event horizon, "everyone we care about."