Post by Alina Rybalka on Jul 8, 2020 15:33:07 GMT -5
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[break][attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break][attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[attr="class","nikki109"]Whoever set up this operation was a complete and total fucking idiot. [break][break]
There was absolutely no point in hitting a small, coastal city and wasting the element of surprise against such a soft target. If one were to attack Mistral via its northern coast, you attacked Argus and then used the train to make it to Mistral before anyone could react properly to your presence. You wouldn’t make it the entire way before the tracks were sabotaged, but you’d get a good distance for free. It wasn’t like Kerch had any major resources, either. It had farmland and corn, but that was basically it. No dust mines, no regular mines, no stone quarries, nothing. It probably had a river monitor gunboat or two, but those would have been destroyed by the locals before any invaders got their hands on them… and even if they did it wasn’t like they were very useful considering they were not very seaworthy in the ocean. [break][break]
Though it wasn’t like the Council’s response was any better. With the complete and utter lack of a standing army and Argus too scared to make a move that would leave its own city vulnerable, they offloaded all the responsibility to other people. They had convinced people that it wasn’t their job to actually fix the problem, but to deputize other people to do so. That ensured as much as possible that if any liberation mission went south it would be the other party who got the blame for botching it rather than the Council getting the blame for providing absolutely zero resource for a foreign attack. [break][break]
If this even was a foreign attack. If it was the government of Atlas, they would have brought much more men and hardware, storming through northern Mistral in a few days most likely. Argus and Wind Path would be the only speed bumps, and they had inside people at Argus and Wind Path could just be surrounded so they couldn’t help anyone else and sieged. Unlike Mistral, Atlas had a professional military and would have no doubt leveraged that for an easy first few days to weeks. Instead, what they had was apparently an invading force that couldn’t even crush a village of several hundred civilians within the first few days… so it sure as hell wasn’t Atlas. [break][break]
Well, it didn’t really matter who it was at this point. Kerch was rich enough to have an actual fortified structure sitting there that they could use to hold out for a few days at least, probably, so it was just a matter of making it there and clearing the way before the last holdouts got captured or killed. The fact that there was no messaging coming out was also weird, frankly. There were no demands, and no manifesto put out before the fact at least that she was aware of. Nobody had any idea who these people were or what they were doing there, which was weird. Usually the type of militant psycho who would do something like this loved the sound of their own voice and spreading their message, but here was just radio silence. [break][break]
This entire situation was one of the few things that would make someone like Knight rush, and they were on the road within thirty minutes of when she first found out what was happening. The Argus Limited was making a trip, but it was delayed for much longer due to having to wait for the trainees to get ready – hours, most likely. It was just faster to get in the car and start zooming along with a solid head start. [break][break]
She packed her civilian kit, which was a bit different than her usual work gear. For one, there was no mask, and the armor was much more bog standard for her cover profession as security slash bounty hunter. Fugitive Recovery Agent was stamped across the ballcap she was wearing as well as on the back of the Kevlar vest she wore as body armor alongside the optional side and neck protection added on. She had her ballistic goggles over top of the ballcap for now, but easy to pull down if needed. This one was a brand new model that even had a fan included to reduce the fogging, which would have been very helpful in Vacuo but was still very useful in case she needed to use her semblance a lot due to both the fact that it was summertime and the fact that if she let loose her semblance fully the temperature immediately around her would increase significantly and cause a lot of fogging inside even goggles that were specifically designed to minimize it. She wore dark gray pants, reinforced at the seat and knees along with a wider belt area to easier slap on a duty belt with her ammo, gloves, and other assorted equipment. [break][break]
Instead of her regular sidearm, she had a single point sling and a shorter barrel lever action shotgun across her chest. Five rounds was the compromise for its fifteen inch barrel, allowing it to be used in much smaller spaces than a regular shotgun. It wasn’t as accurate, either, but that also didn’t really matter at the ranges she’d be using it. On her hands she wore gray fingerless, hard knuckle gloves that allowed her to use her semblance and use her fists as an actionable alternative to the swords she usually favored. [break][break]
They didn’t actually go inside of Argus due to the heavy security restrictions and the time waste that would have been, but they did get close enough to hear some of the chatter from the city. They had gotten there before Haven, which meant that they would be the first ones in to assess the situation. The Argus Limited hadn’t arrived yet but was supposedly going to within the next half hour. That provided a nice cushion of time to be able to do things and make a positive difference before the collateral damage unit came in and just blew everything up around them. [break][break]
They approached from the South, still in the vehicle, leaning towards the right towards the neighborhood of Snowplace – thankfully Kerch was one of the cities big enough to have tourist maps. It wasn’t long before they realized that driving by car was a fucking terrible idea in this environment, because both Red and Knight would key in on different things in their surroundings. Gray eyes would notice an abandoned campfire, and then seconds later the burnt bedding and supplies next to it in the farmland beside them. [break][break]
Red would, on one of her scans, look even farther right to notice a gunboat in the river chugging along in the distance. It was moving downwards, away from the city, but given the current rate of its movement it wouldn’t hit anything populated until well after the trainees were due to arrive. The gunboat was certainly nothing like Mistral used, it was packed with too many armaments that sacrificed speed and was more heavily armored with what looked like metal outer plating protecting the cannons that was above what a coastal village of this caliber would need. [break][break]
Knight would notice it seconds later and grimace, because they hadn’t even made it to the first buildings yet. It was just the farmland in either direction, but thankfully they were close to a patch of corn that would conceal the car from the ship pretty easily. [break][break]
”Car’s gonna get broken into regardless of where we put it, so make sure you get all your shit out. Right in the corn fields and hope the boat didn’t see us. There’s nothing nearby so we should just let Haven take care of the boat and hope it stalls them for long enough to make a dent here.” [break][break]
Before they left the car, Knight cycled through some radio channels and found some of them had noise… though it was unintelligible at the moment. ”If we can steal some intact radios, or whatever they’re using, that would make things a lot easier.” They couldn't really see anything from there, so they had very little information at this point. If they kept moving forward, though, they were bound to run into some enemy combatants at some point. [break][break]
[break]There was absolutely no point in hitting a small, coastal city and wasting the element of surprise against such a soft target. If one were to attack Mistral via its northern coast, you attacked Argus and then used the train to make it to Mistral before anyone could react properly to your presence. You wouldn’t make it the entire way before the tracks were sabotaged, but you’d get a good distance for free. It wasn’t like Kerch had any major resources, either. It had farmland and corn, but that was basically it. No dust mines, no regular mines, no stone quarries, nothing. It probably had a river monitor gunboat or two, but those would have been destroyed by the locals before any invaders got their hands on them… and even if they did it wasn’t like they were very useful considering they were not very seaworthy in the ocean. [break][break]
Though it wasn’t like the Council’s response was any better. With the complete and utter lack of a standing army and Argus too scared to make a move that would leave its own city vulnerable, they offloaded all the responsibility to other people. They had convinced people that it wasn’t their job to actually fix the problem, but to deputize other people to do so. That ensured as much as possible that if any liberation mission went south it would be the other party who got the blame for botching it rather than the Council getting the blame for providing absolutely zero resource for a foreign attack. [break][break]
If this even was a foreign attack. If it was the government of Atlas, they would have brought much more men and hardware, storming through northern Mistral in a few days most likely. Argus and Wind Path would be the only speed bumps, and they had inside people at Argus and Wind Path could just be surrounded so they couldn’t help anyone else and sieged. Unlike Mistral, Atlas had a professional military and would have no doubt leveraged that for an easy first few days to weeks. Instead, what they had was apparently an invading force that couldn’t even crush a village of several hundred civilians within the first few days… so it sure as hell wasn’t Atlas. [break][break]
Well, it didn’t really matter who it was at this point. Kerch was rich enough to have an actual fortified structure sitting there that they could use to hold out for a few days at least, probably, so it was just a matter of making it there and clearing the way before the last holdouts got captured or killed. The fact that there was no messaging coming out was also weird, frankly. There were no demands, and no manifesto put out before the fact at least that she was aware of. Nobody had any idea who these people were or what they were doing there, which was weird. Usually the type of militant psycho who would do something like this loved the sound of their own voice and spreading their message, but here was just radio silence. [break][break]
This entire situation was one of the few things that would make someone like Knight rush, and they were on the road within thirty minutes of when she first found out what was happening. The Argus Limited was making a trip, but it was delayed for much longer due to having to wait for the trainees to get ready – hours, most likely. It was just faster to get in the car and start zooming along with a solid head start. [break][break]
She packed her civilian kit, which was a bit different than her usual work gear. For one, there was no mask, and the armor was much more bog standard for her cover profession as security slash bounty hunter. Fugitive Recovery Agent was stamped across the ballcap she was wearing as well as on the back of the Kevlar vest she wore as body armor alongside the optional side and neck protection added on. She had her ballistic goggles over top of the ballcap for now, but easy to pull down if needed. This one was a brand new model that even had a fan included to reduce the fogging, which would have been very helpful in Vacuo but was still very useful in case she needed to use her semblance a lot due to both the fact that it was summertime and the fact that if she let loose her semblance fully the temperature immediately around her would increase significantly and cause a lot of fogging inside even goggles that were specifically designed to minimize it. She wore dark gray pants, reinforced at the seat and knees along with a wider belt area to easier slap on a duty belt with her ammo, gloves, and other assorted equipment. [break][break]
Instead of her regular sidearm, she had a single point sling and a shorter barrel lever action shotgun across her chest. Five rounds was the compromise for its fifteen inch barrel, allowing it to be used in much smaller spaces than a regular shotgun. It wasn’t as accurate, either, but that also didn’t really matter at the ranges she’d be using it. On her hands she wore gray fingerless, hard knuckle gloves that allowed her to use her semblance and use her fists as an actionable alternative to the swords she usually favored. [break][break]
They didn’t actually go inside of Argus due to the heavy security restrictions and the time waste that would have been, but they did get close enough to hear some of the chatter from the city. They had gotten there before Haven, which meant that they would be the first ones in to assess the situation. The Argus Limited hadn’t arrived yet but was supposedly going to within the next half hour. That provided a nice cushion of time to be able to do things and make a positive difference before the collateral damage unit came in and just blew everything up around them. [break][break]
They approached from the South, still in the vehicle, leaning towards the right towards the neighborhood of Snowplace – thankfully Kerch was one of the cities big enough to have tourist maps. It wasn’t long before they realized that driving by car was a fucking terrible idea in this environment, because both Red and Knight would key in on different things in their surroundings. Gray eyes would notice an abandoned campfire, and then seconds later the burnt bedding and supplies next to it in the farmland beside them. [break][break]
Red would, on one of her scans, look even farther right to notice a gunboat in the river chugging along in the distance. It was moving downwards, away from the city, but given the current rate of its movement it wouldn’t hit anything populated until well after the trainees were due to arrive. The gunboat was certainly nothing like Mistral used, it was packed with too many armaments that sacrificed speed and was more heavily armored with what looked like metal outer plating protecting the cannons that was above what a coastal village of this caliber would need. [break][break]
Knight would notice it seconds later and grimace, because they hadn’t even made it to the first buildings yet. It was just the farmland in either direction, but thankfully they were close to a patch of corn that would conceal the car from the ship pretty easily. [break][break]
”Car’s gonna get broken into regardless of where we put it, so make sure you get all your shit out. Right in the corn fields and hope the boat didn’t see us. There’s nothing nearby so we should just let Haven take care of the boat and hope it stalls them for long enough to make a dent here.” [break][break]
Before they left the car, Knight cycled through some radio channels and found some of them had noise… though it was unintelligible at the moment. ”If we can steal some intact radios, or whatever they’re using, that would make things a lot easier.” They couldn't really see anything from there, so they had very little information at this point. If they kept moving forward, though, they were bound to run into some enemy combatants at some point. [break][break]
2 Events triggered this post, with both being information ones. One gunboat is now moving south, which will remain consistent in other threads.
[attr="class","nikki103"]1376 words | [attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE | [attr="class","nikki103"]1376 TOTAL WORDS |
NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial ArtsPHARAOH LEAP CREATES
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