Aihara swore silently as he simply kept himself back, the hybrid sight on his rifle granting the zoom necessary to provide proper accuracy at the distance he was at. Each squeeze of the trigger was another three-round burst aimed toward an exposed joint of the enemy GEAR's, he didn't want these guys dead, only pacified. Maybe they had some intel the LDF could use.  They weren't here for the tourist sites, so then they had a purpose, now the next question is what is the purpose they have.  He called Blade on comm-link as he wondered over this. "Blade, what could the South want with the Northern Princess? They don't seem the type to draw attention to themselves with a hostage." They were isolationists after all, so why would they start such an incident over anyone person? It didn't seem right in his mind, not at all.  So he kept his distance, fired concentrated bursts of fire to keep them away from him and hopefully take them down without too much collateral. He would get torn up at close range with their weaponry, considering anything that got near them went kaboom in seconds. So he decided he would stay farther back hoping it would be the safer tactic. He really had no idea how to handle this incident, so he hung back and kept assessing the three GEAR's, hoping to spot a weakness on the GEAR, or in their formation he could exploit.