Jubilation had overtaken their allies, raging with the same intensity as the wounds blighting the flesh of realspace. Where the icons of imperial domination once stood was the bleeding pollution of ethereal distortion, tearing metal, foliage, dirt, and implant-ridden flesh alike. A hated enemy reduced to even less than the term should allow; what need did they have to even pay attention to their allies - their means to an end? Yet it had been done with their help; the revolutionaries were dogged and harsh as living under the boot of membranous and pink-fleshed frequently was, but they liked to think of themselves as a different stripe. [color=8dc73f]"Friends, friends of the Struggle! Now, those who died before us can rest with the footfall of our dancing in their ears, not the rumble of their armor!"[/color] The sound of the gealtirocht leader's hand slapping the upper back of Salvator went out with an audible clunk. The tone of stern vitriol had vanished; alien still to ears both human and post-human, but bereft of the tone that felt accusatory even if solely aimed at the occupiers. [color=8dc73f]"Our mission is finished! No need to bother with this hunk of junk. Why, maybe we can recover it for our own means, at the very least as a trophy!"[/color] He was too focused on interrupting himself, pausing to shout and banter with his surviving friends. Many of them had taken out personal hand-phones - cheap, off-world, and just from a glance unsightly with the various modifications they'd no doubt had their own engineers install. The little clicks of their phone apps going off in sequence could barely be heard above their celebrating, the cameras like a tiny pitter-patter of clapping and applause to the cacophony of their joy. His eyes were not following the inputting into the control panel of the artillery cannon; the way the weapon shifted and groaned barely garnered attention from the surviving insurrectionists, even as the barrel began to shift. Until, it had shifted too much and Salvator said what he said. In the brief moment before Salvator vanished from where he once stood, he would not have required the most advanced scanners to know the way the eel-like being's features had twisted. His comrades had turned, hearing the blink, seeing their allies suddenly falling back, and feeling, hearing, dreading the way the dots had fallen into place. [color=8dc73f]"You... all along you were-"[/color] The cannon fired and silenced the leader's voice, a wash of ethereal power coming over them. Some had fallen onto their knees, phones dropped, watching as the same wrath that had given them historic victory now stole the taste of victory from the battlefield. The bunker, a fare more diminuitive structure than the mobile command center or repurposed stadium, was not silhouetted against the birth of a wrathful sun. Neither did the support trucks and their convoy; with the same uncaring judgement of the beyond, there was but a near-perfect inverted-dome crater. There was no time to watch the scurrying of horrified, shocked Front forces; now tasting the same horror inflicted onto their tyrants in a cruel twist. Their weapons would speak. Near immediately, a rail-cannon swung forth and zeroed in on the largest, heaviest target - the same one that had formed the bulwark of their advance. Rifle fire and grenades flew as readily as howling rage, too incoherent for speech as language and round flew with equal intent. A few rounds glanced the unztadtlige's armor, a few clanging against its bulk - rattling armor, but brusing rather than cracking. Semi-automatic weapons appeared to turn automatic, a torrent of blasts erupting as the traitors fell back. A crackle over the coms; friendly, but blurred, grainy, unclear doubly so over the retaliatory barrage sent from former allies. [color=f26522]"-Active jamming! We can't track your location, ghost data-"[/color] A sound like a whistle tinged first with a loud thud. Before even enhanced senses and ocular capability could detect it, two human bodies simply vanished; clouds of fizzling mist and squirming innards leaving two torsos standing. Two trees in front of the Envenomed squad's retreat simply lost massive chunks of mass around their middle; bark exploding outwards as if tinder, sending bramble and branches crashing down before them. [color=f26522]"-Unit! I repeat, specialist-"[/color] One of the humans leapt out of the way, rolling away from a torrent of smoke-trails slamming in a v-shaped line. Anti-personnel rounds shred three more survivors - comrades became skeletal remains, tattered centipede-like creatures holding onto bits of bodily mass and armor, the other surviving gealtirocht a pincushion for serrated, whirring shrapnel-saws slowly powering down as if fattened on anguilline meat and juice. The one who jumped gripped his midsection; the pain of re-attaching to the lower torso was punishing. His aim was shakey - cracking off two spiteful shots at the Envnomed, before he ducked again. [color=f26522]"-Bile! Can't land until-"[/color] One last scream of anger as the same weapon that pulped the first victims fires; this close, it was a piercing report, a firecracker in the lower registers - a deep gavel pound rather than celebratory popping. The gealtirocht's voice vanished as did his body; raw physical shock from a massive automatic rifle-cannon overwhelmed reinforced armor. Turned to a footnote in history before his body even fully became a scattered mess of multicolored, moist matter and electrcuting armor fragments. The hellish spray of gunfire swept over the battlefield and the rest of the ZRF vanished behind it. No silence stilled the battlefield as dirt and debris rained, a counter-rhythm against the pounding, heavy footfalls of an approaching threat. A shipping container groaned as a mammoth forced knocked over, the jutting tail-fins of the burning gunship swatted away with even less trouble soon after. Through the smoke of its judgement, it stomped through. [Center][hider=ENEMY HEAVY ARMORED WALKER UNIT: RESOLUTE-CLASS UCL MULTI-WEAPON PLATFORM] [img]https://i.ibb.co/dKqGb0K/WIDE-AND-HEFTY-MECHA-WITH-A-LARGE-MACHINE-GUN-crux-lee-crux-lee-puma-mech.jpg[/img] [/hider][/Center] [Center] [hider=BGM: Byatis - Apology of War] [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV8matC05nk&pp=ygUZIkJ5YXRpcyIgIkFwb2xvZ3kgb2YgV2FyIg%3D%3D[/youtube] [/hider] [/Center] What stomped through did so as thruster jets on the back of it shoulders powered down, blue anti-grav pulsations diminishing as wheels on the edge of its boot-like feet retract, stability prioiritized over speed. At 26 feet tall, it was even denser in its bulk than the warform even if its two visible weapons were notably smaller. A preliminary scan revealed missile pods stored in its shoulder but soon, electronic disruption makes such things difficult - something on its body is deliberately targeting them their coms and combat electronics. The former was silenced yet the latter can only struggle. Given by the muddy-looking smears on its knees and hands, combined with the crude graffiti of a string of triangular, mantis-like heads impaled on a sword with a wingled handle, it's clear it had been very busy even before it was called over. The heavy duty "machine gun" in its arms locked onto the warform immediately and fired, not just at the Envenomed but through the trees they are putting between themselves. A few rounds slammed into Echo's multipedal body; they did not pierce, glancing hits, but they hit hard enough to stagger the massive warmachine. Its shoulder-mounted cannon swivels around; it points at Ilshar's general direction... but it seemed to avoid aiming at him deliberately. Perhaps it was unable detect his specific location - the camera-pod sitting atop of its shoulder mounted cannon scanned the area. The weapon thudded out its judgement - HE-shells flew as close as within 15 feet of the hidden tarrhaidim, annihilating whatever foliage was behind him, lighting up the woods as the massive machine advanced!