[h3][center][u][i]AFFS Subaltern Johan Rosales-Eichberg
Rifleman RFL-5D[/i][/u][/center][/h3]

	Teamwork. His father told him tall tales about his exploits as a mercenary, him and his fellow mercs tackling impossible odds and coming out on top, in a huge variety of situations in a plethora of environments. There was one constant in all of the stories that his father stressed. Teamwork. Through communication, effort and cooperative action you create teamwork, and with teamwork you can overcome things that would normally be impossible. Johan heard his orders, he was tasked with destroying the Urbanmech. The small pilot swallowed, he dictated his teams whole advance, if he wasn't able to destroy that Urbanmech quickly, all of his lancemates would be bogged down. Johan slowed his advanced and kept a large chunk of raised rock in between him and the pirates. Maybe... maybe he didn't need to explicitly destroy the Urbanmech. The most dangerous thing about the light mech was it's AC/20, which Johan recalled was mounted in it's right arm mount. He remembered that there was a massive textbook back at the NAIS, it had the armor values of nearly every single mech deployed in the modern day. Extensive live fire weapons testing gave that textbook highly accurate information as to how much firepower a mech could take before it's armor was stripped off, and how much it could take before being completely destroyed. The Urbanmech R-60L. Luckily the NAIS had their hands on at least one, since the data was listed on Johan's neurohelmet. He quickly scanned the information before stepping his Rifleman out and peering over the horizon, searching for the shape of an Urbanmech. The armor on the right arm mount of a UM-R60L was astoundingly light, and it would take only a little bit more than one PPC blast to take off the arm entirely.

[b]"Rat 2-2 here, identifying a T-D-R variant, looks like a retrofitted 5S, nonstandard armament."[/b] Johan heard through his radio. A retrofitted mech was trouble, but for right now not his trouble. Johan focused on finding that Urbanmech... until he saw a blur of movement from the corner of his eye, and shot out from it a blue bolt from a PPC. [b]"PPC fire. Far range, accurate,"[/b] Johan heard again, he kept his eye near where he saw the fire.
There! The broad shoulders, inverted triangle torso shape, and iconic mouth shaped cockpit shape, it was most likely a panther. But as soon as it came up, it fell back down to whatever ground depression it was running along. Jumpjets. Johan knew there was a river, perhaps it was running down it? Johan clicked his communications open but whatever words that came out were stammered and incoherent, he shut it off, embarrassed and recalled his father once more. Every single time his father wanted him to look at something, a bird, a food stand, a nice looking car, he would always say 'look' first. The alert. Then where it was, what it was, then whatever additional information. His father always stressed that communication was a major part of teamwork. Johan tried again.

[b]"Contact! Far! East-South-East, bearing One-Zero-Seven! Um... Likely Panther with PPC! Running southwards, using jump jets to fire at us!"[/b] Johan made sure to shout over whatever gunfire there was. He had his Rifleman step out a little more, hoping that the enemy Thunderbolt was busy engaging with Mattlov's Shadowhawk. Johan scanned for the Urbanmech, and he found it beyond the Thunderbolt, using it as cover from Mattlov, but the Thunderbolt couldn't protect the Urbanmech from two. Johan halted his rifleman, swung the torso around and took a quick second to sight in his target. The Urbanmech was running at top speed towards the treeline, Johan selected his Rifleman's left arm PPC and squeezed the trigger, a bolt of lightning shooting out towards the Urbanmech's rear right torso. The shot was intended to disable the ammo feed, and possibly disable the whole arm along with it, but at the last moment it twisted it's torso to the right. The shot smacked against the gun housing of the Urbanmech's right arm, where it had it's armor. The armor soaked up most of the impact and damage, though the internal systems of the arm was damaged. The arm began to spark and smoke, but it still wasn't destroyed, and the AC/20 was likely still in play. Johan was about to follow up with a single large laser to take it's arm off, but the enemy Thunderbolt responded. Johan saw it twist it's torso to aim at his Rifleman, and Johan reactively twisted his own torso to defend against the incoming attack. Johan looked over and saw two bright green lasers lance out, medium lasers, and they zapped at Johan's right gun arm. His BattleMech told him that it felt the lasers raking towards the gun barrels, scorching and melting armor plating as it went along. The Thunderbolt was aiming to damage his gun barrels! Johan lowered his gun arms to avoid this, and the last split second of the incoming medium lasers shot past Johan's cockpit, going past him now that his arms were out of harms way. 

Johan grit his teeth and took another step forward, putting his Rifleman into a crouch. He only had a few precious moments now before the Urbanmech reached the treeline. Johan twisted his Rifleman's torso towards the enemy and brought his gun arms up to bear, the Urbanmech had just reached the treeline but if he was fast enough... the left gun arm again, large laser this time. A brilliant blue beam burned forward, striking the Urbanmech in the back. Johan brought the beam towards it's right, where the heavily damaged gun arm was, but it responded by twisting left, presenting its undamaged left side. Despite this Johan kept the beam on target, if he wasn't going to have it's gun arm, he was going to damage it as much as he could with this laser. The Urbanmech swung left, using the trees as cover and concealment. The laser sliced through one tree with ease, the palm tree falling over with a crash. The laser halted before it could cut through the second tree, it leaned, while on fire, splintered with an audible crack and impacted another tree as it fell over. Then the Urbanmech disappeared behind a cluster of denser trees.
Johan muttered a curse, frustrated, and stood his mech up again. He walked backwards back into cover, putting Mattlov's Shadowhawk and the rock between him and the Thunderbolt. He wanted to cool off his mech, despite it being only around the halfway mark. As soon as he got into cover, he thumbed his communications again, [b]"Johan reporting. Urbanmech's right arm is heavily damaged, left side is slightly damaged. It disappeared in the trees. Currently cooling at half heat capacity and on standby."[/b]
Johan thought about that short engagement. There were Harassers reported with the Urbanmech... where had they gone? And that Panther moving south towards the patch of trees, where the Urbanmech disappeared into... they were regrouping their light mechs, possibly. But these were just speculations, Johan didn't want to bother the Captain with useless information. Once Johan cooled off entirely, he thought about repaying that Thunderbolt back with a large laser or two.