It's a Trap! by Ghost | World Anvil

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Thu 3rd Feb 2022 04:34

It's a Trap!

by Ghost

Ghost is rudely interrupted from her reading of "A Short History of Ethics", by a broadcast alert to the team members in Homestead. Two distress signals arrive simultaneously from resistance cells.
 
Clearly, we will have to split our forces to respond to both. The probability of two such calls arriving at the same moment however is vanishingly small. This is without a doubt in Ghost's mind, a trap. We are likely to encounter extreme force at both locations with our teams each at half strength to deal with it. Sadly this does not change the fact that we are bound nonetheless to respond to both.
 
A brief discussion ensues debating who shall respond where, with the ultimately obvious decision that those who can respond the most quickly should go to the furthest location. It resolves when Li'l Rocket points out that he is capable of moving the whole of the slower team to their destination within seconds and still arrive at the second location, 'before' Ghost gets there.
 
As Ghost rockets up out of the atmosphere to traverse a suborbital parabola to her destination, she gets an oh so rare glimmer into humour at the thought that she isn't as fast, relatively speaking, as she once thought she was.
 
She arrives on scene to find no less than six Blacktalon power suit agents already there and opening up with lethal violence on resistance members and civilians alike. The decision to not evacuate civilians weighs on her but is tempered with her standard strategy of giving the enemy a more important target... Her.
 
She rockets past two of the Blacktalon agents, striking both with a force usually sufficient to drop them. They do go down, but she apparently didn't strike as hard as she might have, as soon they get back up. More unfortunately, striking two such targets requires focus upon targetting to the detriment of agility. She gets nailed twice with force hard enough to seriously hurt.
 
With her first targets getting back up, she has little choice but to repeat the process and again does a maximum combat velocity passing strike on the two of them. THIS time they go down. Ghost notes with gratitude that Sandcrab has by this point evacuated two of the most vulnerable of our charges to some safety.
 
Li'l Rocket by this time has done serious damage to one more and is starting in on another, and Sandcrab then has knocked another flat, burying it under a big machine. There remains one untouched, free to unleash upon our largely defenceless charges.
 
It is then that the true trap reveals itself as two Destroid bots materialize very near to the untouched Blacktalon agent. Ghost deliberates for but a moment before shifting her priority to the Destroids. They are close together. She'll do yet another double strike.
 
She starts her acceleration and as she closes, she notices them being semi-transparent and indistinct. They are desolid! At the last instant, with herculean effort, she redirects her path to strike the Blacktalon agent instead. She burns massive amounts of energy doing these maximum velocity passes and she can't afford to waste it. The agent is struck, but perhaps due to her last instant retarget, does not strike as hard as she might.
 
There are three combat effective Blacktalon agents still on the field, now with two Destroids also to contend with. Ghost is hurting and down nearly half her endurance, and still, we have to take these out fast! Our other team is likely faced with similar opposition and most of them are largely untested.
 
We have to deal with what we face quickly so we can join our other team! Ghost resolves at that moment that come that time, she'll ask Li'l Rocket to carry her. He can actually get her on scene much faster and give her a brief moment to recover while he does so, before she dives back in.