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[sub][color=Silver][i]The Siege of Amone, September 28th - [b]Increasing the Pressure[/b][/i][/color][/sub]

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[color=Silver]	With the street clear for another solid minute, Jean turned around back to his fellow soldiers. Diana, Isaac and Britta had been hot on his heels since the first whistle had blown, with Lucia close by his side. Now, the Cathedral was starting to appear on the urban horizon. Turning the last few corners, a colossal radiance of righteous authority clashed with the remaining backdrop of destroyed buildings, ruined streets and empty casings. Standing still for a minute, he heard the continuous orchestration of gunfire unravel amidst the silence of Amone. His breath was short and bittersweet, leaving a vapour of disgusted confidence to follow alongside it. Their march was far from over and the day was still young and spirited. Moments of pure shock were being left in the dust of their own heels whilst the Federation's forces paced themselves with intensity and without mercy. Amone wasn't just a city to some, it was a home for their religious sentiment. Jean empathised with their intent without holding his own candle to their Cruxian beliefs. Looking around, Jean noticed the streets light up with more troops, who'd cleared neighbouring streets quickly. For a while, Jean felt pity for the frontline defenders caught in the swarm. They had no chance, even if their objective was to slow down the approaching infantry. After all, they never really slowed anyone down properly. A mirrored sense of power entered Jean's mind, making him feel actually useful for a short while. As the footsteps and gunfire grew exponentially as the days went by, with countless lives being ended every second. Jean took another deep breath. For now they were to go ahead without their commanders. Middleton was nowhere to be seen at the Cathedral, so it was only believable that he was elsewhere in the siege of Amone, touring the ranks of his soldiers to lead them to some brutal victory he spied upon. Whereas on the road to the cathedral things were far different. Individual skill had become a vast fixation, giving way to the common soldier to thrive over the actions of one commander. Immediately, Jean turned to Isaac and Diana.[/color]

[color=Aqua][b]"You two, I want you to join the right flank. There might be resistance outside, but use that as an opportunity to take the interior guard of the Cathedral by surprise. Britta, Lucia and myself will take the centre still. Be careful, see you inside!"[/b][/color] [color=Silver]With his orders to split up in play, he turned back to the ranks of anonymous soldiers still waiting for the next order to push. When one Sergeant called out their opportunity, Jean edged his gaze to Britta and Lucia quickly before nodding with a comforting smile. Their task was more taxing than the others in their small and formulated party, taking the brunt of the assault's force through the full storm. Hoping their were ready, he spoke softly and knocked on Lucia's helmet with a clenched fist.[/color] [color=Aqua][b]"Let's get through this...together."[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	With the next advancement initiated, Jean joined the platoons worth of soldiers moving towards their next checkpoint: the Cathedral's entrance itself. For the first half of the journey, a cunning silence warned them of the ambush ahead, leading to an organised split and spread forged into the Army's formation. Taking two sides of the street each, most of them kept their eyes to the sides whilst only the front few watched their direct path. All around them the splintering shrieks of shots savagely scraped by the stones and steel bodies of destroyed motor vehicles. At the end of the vast, open street, spanning the width of most infamous motorways, a flurry of machine gun fire suddenly started to head their way. When the first few dropped, Jean immediately found himself piled with more unnamed soldiers, all taking a peak ahead to see what had interrupted their advance. Surely enough, when Jean took a look all he felt was the immense pain of a terrible flashback. The near past had shown itself to be brutal by all means, and the metallic horse at the end of the street fully realised it. The Armoured Cars had been deployed once more, two of them instead. Those too slow to reach the endless streams of rubble, collapsed housing and park walls dropped immediately, finding no time to react to their undying skewer. Lucia held onto her own helmet tightly, silently whispering to herself as the meander of gunfire kept them at an unease. Before long, several more soldiers started to join their pile, with others brandishing strange weapons Jean hadn't seen before. Grenades strapped into huge piles, bottles filled with oil and conversions to [url=https://collections.royalarmouries.org/media/emumedia/0/799/large_DI_2014_2850.jpg]standard rifles[/url], where only a single, far greater cartridge was loaded at a time. They weren't an entirely new invention, just the reconfiguration of an old and common rifle to use a single, larger bullet. Its effectiveness wasn't well recorded, but with the grin of the Fusiliers joined by their side it seemed to be an honest task. Many of them sang praise to the initial push, before noting that they needed to get closer to ensure their shot would hit.

	Jean let the air escape his lungs before breathing a fresh intake. Turning to Lucia, he clasped a hand onto her arm to get her attention, letting them get a good second to look at one another to freshen their nerves. Once he did so, he turned back to Britta and patted her on the back. Carefully, he pointed a hand to a closer pile of rubble, not too far from their current position.[/color]

[color=Aqua]"Could you take a few rifleman and set up your Em'Gee behind there? Might give you a good spot to return fire. We'll take these guys around the side to get closer to those things."[/color] [color=Silver]If Britta wanted to find a better position, he wouldn't of had any qualms about it. It was only his own speculation in the heat of the moment before he could finalise the best possible location for her to lay down a suppressive volley back at the defenders before them. Infantry had begun to surround the cars, using sandbags of their own nearby to create an even thicker exterior defence than the one encountered moments before. Hesitantly assigning a few soldiers to stay behind at Britta's discretion, he took Lucia and the prepped anti-armour troops to the left. Sure, their equipment was hastily put together, but it wasn't an unwelcomed addition if it was their best shot at moving upwards. Besides, they weren't his. These soldiers wanted the credit to use their newfound tools of destruction, then Jean would have to help the greater warriors pave the way for them.

	Darting left was a moderate task. Every soldier went one by one, where the occasional skiff of smoke and dust slammed off of the wall whenever a bullet came whizzing by. Luckily they were blessed with the covering haven of an interior household, letting them traverse the buildings until they could get a clear shot at their target. With many holes in each of the buildings' walls, a consecutive path opened up and allowed for them to move quickly. Jean was amongst the first few to lead the group, with Lucia still closely following behind. He wanted to ensure her safety, knowing that in death her agony would only provide the absolute devastation of one Captain Middleton. She seemed to be handling herself quite well, keeping her head on her shoulders with her rifle tightly clenched in her hands. Her youthful shiver garnered the attention of the fusiliers around her, silently questioning the legitimacy of her own inclusion. Jean's protection wasn't great, but it was enough to maintain her focus on the task at hand. One by one, they clambered through open windows, broken walls and up spiralled stairs, figuring out their positioning whilst the rattling of machine guns and blasting of rifles only a few metres outside raged on. Their flank wasn't to bring them right beside the vehicles, only close enough to unleash their tools.

	Several more minutes of climbing, where they silently held their breaths in an attempt to not give away their position was met with the occasional hand-to-hand engagement. Jean witnessed the fusiliers find several soldiers positioned in the upper windows, quickly silencing them with the piercing of the back with knifes, crushing of their windpipes through rifle-based strangulation and moment-to-moment executions that attempted to mask their sauntering engagement. Finally, they reached a point of which the rifles could set themselves up. One by one, they each loaded their larger bullets into their chambers, bolting the rifles with an intense weight to them. When the first took position in one window, the other two spread themselves out further. Jean and Lucia sat closely to the first anti-armoured gunner. On a silent count to three, he squeezed the trigger and the blasting boom of the far greater projectile sent a shockwave throughout the windowsill, shuddering the smashed glass that sat upon it. Jean watched the round flutter through the air, denting into the side of the armoured car before scattering onto the ground. The soldier cursed himself.[/color]

[color=Orange][b]"Shit! Bad angle, get the others to shoot-"[/b][/color] [color=Silver]Immediately, the turret of the car suddenly shifted, and its barrel began to face the window they looked out of. The destructive rifleman turned back to Lucia and Jean, pushing them back quickly.[/color] [color=Orange][b]"Get away from the windo-"[/b][/color]

[color=Silver]	Cut short by a bullet cleanly sweeping from the back of his head out the front, the corpse dropped on the floor, narrowly missing Lucia. The two scattered away, holding their hands upon their helmets as the bullets reigned upon their position, flying over their heads quickly. Jean began to crawl to the side, using a free hand to make sure Lucia was following closely behind. With the car distracted, a second rifleman poked his head out of a parallel window, his round already loaded, before firing a piercing shot to breach the gunner's protective shell. As soon as the clang of a metallic splinter rang out, the gunner's suppressive ability ceased immediately. The bullet had pierced the first Car's mode of offence and defence, giving allowance for a second soldier, clutching a cluster of grenades tightly bound together, to charge towards the window, using the run up to monumentally extend its reach. The cluster of explosives landed directly next to the vehicle and exploding on its short remaining fuse, blasting shrapnel and fire in a multitude of directions. Any imperial infantry stood within its proximity were showered with its blast whilst the vehicle itself rocked, its wheels and underside breached by the ordinance.

	Seconds of ash and smoke passed, letting them cough and splutter. The gunfire continued on the other side of the street as only the first of the duo had been executed via flame and fury. Besides, the explosion wasn't enough to blast through the remainder of the infantry outside their building, making way for any potential rivals to enter their homestead in a violent clash. Jean poked his head over the window sill again, seeing the back hatch of the vehicle open as the commander wandered out, smoked and plumed in ash. Before anyone reacted, Lucia poked her own head up, rifle ready and slammed her finger down onto the trigger, quickly and efficiently dropping the driver in his escape, before taking cover once more to avoid the several rifle shots returning to their position. Now, all they had to do was hope that Britta, Isaac or Diana were ready to deal with the opposing car, or they would have to find alternatives in clearing it. Only a hundred metres away from their position, the grand entrance to the Cathedral sat still, waiting and beckoning the Federation soldiers to go inside. Only once they cleared the outside could they enter safely, hoping to deal with the beast inside. All while this was happening, a second thunderous clap shook the earth. Wherever it was, the behemoth had just fired its second shot of the Siege, arcing once more towards the headquarters of the Amone offensive instead of the frontline itself. Jean heard the immense grumble in the floor beneath him as a distant explosion shivered the foundations of the ground. He hoped whoever it hadn't hit anyone, but with its blast radius, it was sure to have devastated more than just immobile, injured soldiers.[/color]

[centre][sub][@Landaus Five-One][@FalloutJack][/sub][/centre]