Bernard had all but run over a kid playing with a padd, definitely not what the aging pilot wanted to see when he was in the mood for some liquor. He bent forward to hear what the kid was saying, nodded stonefaced as he soaked in the fact that he'd just missed everybody. He was about to grumble before offering the chico a smoke, but before he could respond, his Codec started yelling at him. He pressed his knuckles into his temples-- he didn't have to check the specifics to know what it was trying to tell him. If he moved like a tank before, he moved like a faster tank now, keeping his curses to himself as he tried to turn the damn thing off. He burst into the frantic activity of the [i]Samigina[/i] hangar, everybody scrambling to battlestations, the pilots expected to scramble at a moment's notice. Unlucky that most of the rest of the crew had gone out for drinks, but as he strapped into the new and improved Snake Eater, the old man felt a certain amount of freedom. There was just a battle ahead, no orders, no need to hold back. He caught a glance of Ryder near her machine as he climbed into the cockpit, and grinned. A girl raised by the old guard huh? It hadn't been in Cecilia's notes, but B.F.F. could recognize a countryman, a [i]real[/i] countryman, when he saw one. He threw out the salute of the old Emarran State in case she'd catch it, and with a clang of his hatch, he was on his way.

---

He took in the smoke of the battlefield first, letting it mix with the taste of his foul smelling cigarettes. It wasn't as good as a stiff drink, but it wasn't so bad. At the moment he was acting as a vanguard, his only aim to sow chaos behind enemy lines. Truth be told, he was a lot more comfortable when the chips were down and the alarms were going off-- he could count the times when everything had gone perfectly on one hand, but he'd kept all his fingers so far by being able to handle things when a battle developed as per the usual pandemonium. Bernard's Handou rumbled down Highview Street, a stone rolling through a river. It was something of a shame that the city streets had turned into a battlefield. Another fifteen minutes or so of this, and a river wouldn't be such a bad way to describe the alleyways of Hamarr. Snake Eater rumbled low to the ground as Bernard caught his first mark, the old soldier keeping the engine gunning even lower, trying to keep his heat and noise down. B.F.F had the mechanics of piloting a FRAME down to a sweet, sweet science, and knew a few tricks that he'd decided to let Elaine and the rest of the younger guns figure out for themselves. 

First thing was that he could more or less mask his heat signature by running his engine in fits and bursts, letting it push his machine and cruise until he'd [i]just[/i] started to run down on momentum. The concept was similar to driving a stick shift, not that any of the younger pilots would know. Heat vision for a large, non-organic shape like a FRAME was conducted in stages-- unlike a human body that was constantly painted with radiant heat, heat signatures are usually tracked at a FRAME's center of mass, where the core and engines are located. By letting the heat rise and fall, Bernard could create an iffy looking heat signature, difficult to notice and even more tricky to target blind. More than that, there were two reasons why his controls vibrated when he snored. First, because he'd practiced so well with them that they had started to loosen; usually it was something that would be tuned up during regular maintenance before it got nearly as bad as shaky controls, but Sigint and the rest of the shop crew knew well and good that loose was the way that Old Snake liked it. Second, he'd deliberately kept and forced a certain lack of responsiveness in his controls-- roughly 1.972 seconds of input latency, he'd be able to tell you if anyone bothered to ask. This would be very important, when the old man was snoring, he preferred to take things slow. 

Well, there were actually three reasons that his controls shook when he snored. The man snores [i]damn[/i] loud.

[h1][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKeN9zIkoE]![/url][/h1]

Target spotted. Bernard recognized the hulking silhouettes of two Barghests through the windows of the high rise, the clear, modern lines of rich architecture framing a picture of screaming office workers and all too human terror. B.F.F. took another long drag of his cigarette; it was going to be a long day before this mess got sorted out. He turned in his cockpit to see the glint of metal roaring down the crowded city streets. Looks like the cavalry had arrived!

As Bernard watched the detachment of Preying Panthers engage in battle, he took stock of the way they moved in coordination. A new FRAME he hadn't seen before was extending way past the main body of friendly forces, with Jupiter Grounded and Cecilia's Kirin not far behind. Fortunately, the kitten had made first contact with the enemy; were it anybody else, Bernard was sure that they would've been shredded. He could feel the vibration of her commands as she screamed that she'd made contact, but by then, the Snake Eater was already moving. With practiced timing, the veteran Handou swung the AFC-40/L over the shoulder where it had been mounted and into the window in front of it, spraying glass into the lobby of the building the first two enemy soldiers had decided to use for cover. Bernard took care to wedge the autocannon steady against the steel beams that had artfully supported the building's structural integrity, steadying its recoil without fully clamping down on its capacity to spray. Bernard watched kept a religious eye on the environment around him as well as his immediate radar, flicking switches with terse decision to apply active camouflage to his craft. He wanted to be prepared for attack and defense with something that was like the old sneaking suits that soldiers used to use, but in the time it took for him to manipulate his craft to pick a piece of rebar from the ground, the strange FRAME had more or less attempted to pounce on the enemy! No time left!

Snake Eater flicked the safety on its autocannon to full-auto and pulled the trigger before jamming the piece of rebar behind the trigger guard. It was a distraction that would keep that crazy pilot from being shredded immediately by one Barghest if their attempts to melee the other succeeded, even if it would only last the scant few seconds it would take to empty the clip. Thankfully it was enough to buy the rookie time to make it to the other side of the street, and just enough time for Bernard to position Snake Eater at the opposite corner to Cecelia, watching the intersection ahead. Suppressive fire coming from out of the fucking wall; Bernard felt some satisfaction in how cruel of a surprise a fight in the city could be. Even if it meant that the enemy soldier's first reaction would be to rain bullets into the office building, it was move that kept one of his "kids" safe for the moment. A moment was all he had after-all, as three more Barghests made their way in a wedge formation into the intersection from the left. They hadn't noticed Snake Eater yet because of his trick with his engine, but they seemed to be moving to flank the main body. It'd be only a few more seconds before one of them had a good chance of catching B.F.F. in line of sight, active camouflage or not. If Bernard was going to intercept any of them, he'd have to move soon.

SNAKE EATER 120.85: "Hahaha, how bad do things look out there, Jupiter Grounded? Keep talking to us, looks like we got three bogeys on our eleven. Do me a favor and tell the kitten I'm going to push up this lane as you push yours-- send me some cover?"