【Ｃｅｌｉｃａ】
Level:5
EXP:5/50
Word Count:1,292 (+3)
Location:Highertower
Celica was only slightly startled by someone being so suddenly close, and she responded by her machine going through a quick full transformation, changing from a giant tank, to an even taller
humanoid machine. However... by this point, there were pieces missing, cracked armor, holes here and there, and more than one place were sparking and smoking. The whole thing was barely holding together, but it could still move, and had just a short while ago proven it could still fight. But it was definitely coming to the end of what punishment it could take.
What was previously the main gun in its tank form, was now a rifle mounted on the shoulder. It detached, being taken and held like a normal weapon, aimed down at the new arrival. There was a moment of hesitation, before Celica decided they weren't a threat, at least not to her. The weapon lowered, and there was a moment of silence, before inside the mech, Celica let out a huff. "Humans... it's always humans..." Well, one of them was anyway.
She was about to question why NLA had not sent a full Skell squadron to assist her, but right then something fell from the sky, landing in a puff of sand and dust. When all that faded, it left some other sort of machine. It was smaller than her own machine, certainly, and did seem a lot less advanced. But it had the advantage of not being damaged, while her Skell looked like it could explode at any second.
Still, the problem was that Celica was challenged, and still under the influence, she ignored both Zenkichi and Blazermate, as well as the two who arrived shortly after. Standing up straight, she faced the Titan, giant rifle in hand. If she were smart, she would have hunkered back down, and taken shots at it from the cover that had kept her alive all this time. Celica was, however, not a smart pilot. At least not when it came to in the moment decisions. Still, she didn't like to fight, so she didn't make the first move, waiting to see what the other mech did.
And so it was the Titan that lifted its weapon, and started to fire first, with squads of infantry pouring in around it. The smaller of the two machines started to charge forward, intent on rushing the position and not allowing Celica to use her cover again. Unfortunately for his plan, he hadn't expected that she wasn't even going to attempt to use the cover at all, and instead stepped out from the cratered scattering of cargo containers.
The Titan's weapon wasn't the most accurate from range, its pilot having intended to use it to suppress her, but she was... not being suppressed. Instead she was letting the stray, inaccurate shots hit it here and there, simply having faith that nothing too vital would be hit, or if it was, the armor would hold. If only her machine weren't so damage, she wouldn't even consider this opponent a threat!
She aimed her own rifle, with a few shots pinging off the armor she had left. She took a moment to think, and instead of firing dead center, she took a shot at one of its arms, landing an explosive shot, before triggering an ammunition switch and firing a followup shot that ripped through part of the arm that supported the weapon, causing it to wobble with sustained fire, and completely lose all sense of accuracy. With that taken care of, she remounted her weapon on the shoulder, and the two other weapons near the head lifted up.
Before she could do anything though, the other pilot seemed to have a very similar idea, as their own shoulder mounted launchers lifted up, and after a moment of scanning the debris, fired off a barrage of missiles targeting everything they possibly could.
Celica could have easily transformed her vehicle and sped past the barrage, allowing the missiles to hit the dirt behind her, but she wasn't the only thing that was being targeted. She didn't know why, but something nagged at her to do something about that, rather than leave the others to deal with it themselves. And so she adjusted her fire of the new weapons, and a spray of her own missiles launched. None of them were really targeting the other machine, but instead each missile intercepted one of the Titan's, causing a wall of explosions between them, and a screen of black smoke blocking visibility.
After a moment of hesitation, Celica's machine started to move forward, and passed into the smoke where the Titan was last seen. However, as she expected to cross to the other side of the black smoke, she instead found white smoke, sparkling with light. Before she could realize what it was, alerts rang out in her cockpit about electrical surges, and lights flashed and flickered as her machine started to bug out. Normally such a thing wouldn't effect something as advanced as her Skell, but as damaged as it was, everything that could prevent the power surges was either malfunctioning... or just plain gone.
When she next saw the Titan, it had a knife in hand... which by any person's standards was more like a giant sword. It came walking through the smoke at her, its arm having apparently failed to keep up the weight of its main weapon due to Celica's earlier shot, and now seemed intent on finishing off her disabled machine up close and personal. She heard a voice from the Titan, a cocky man's voice as he said "Real shame you had to come rushing in like that. Your Titan's pretty unique, I'm sure our engineer boys will have the time of their life taking it apart and putting it back together, nice and shining with the New Conglomerate colors."
Celica was working the controls of her machine, but it wasn't moving. She could hear it trying, but she couldn't get it to actually move, to raise a weapon to attack. It was annoying, with nothing but a knife her opponent was more vulnerable than ever, and yet nothing was working. "Come on... you were built for far greater threats than this. You won't lose against a pile of scrap like that."
The enemy pilot brought up the knife, right where he expected the pilot to be based on his knowledge of Titans, and with a grin said "The NC thanks you for your charitable donation." And plunged the knife into the Skell.
Whatever the knife found inside however sent a sudden jolt of built up electricity back through the Titan's arm, effectively reversing the EMP effect back on the one who had used it in the first place. It took a moment for the energy levels to even out, effectively using the Titan as a conduit to offload excess power, just enough for Celica to raise an arm and grab the rifle on the shoulder, and lower it down, right into the place she had seen the hatch open.
All the other pilot could say, was a short "Ahh hell..." before an explosion cleared away all the smoke around them, and the Titan fell back with a gaping hole run straight through it, crashing onto the ground in a heap of smoke. Celica's Skell stood over it, knife still stuck in the machine, which had gone just below the cockpit, leaving Celica safe... well, safe from the knife.
Her Skell wasn't moving now, sparking, smoking... something was probably on fire. And though the Titan was down, she soon realized that the infantry that had accompanied it were surrounding her, and her Skell was finally done for, not able to retaliate at all.
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