The Proving Grounds [IC]

[Gigaverse]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Shinji Sakahara VS Elena Trotskaya ~

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Himeji Castle, Bizenmaru Garden

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Somewhere in her rage, Trotskaya might have forgotten who she was facing off against. Like a well-timed bomb, Sakahara's reflex left little room for mistakes in his move against the Chthonian warrior. That she was already too well within the death zone of his next strike and rushing at him in a position that prevented her from turning back would also contribute greatly to the damage done against her.

Kuurei (Aerial Command).

Just as the blond bent backwards and the distance between his stomach and Trotskaya's blade was reduced to a centimeter, the arena's floor was lit in a bright, breathtaking shade of blue. An exact yoctosecond after it happened, the light on the floor expanded and began to climb to the skies high above; punching through the air and skyrocketing at unholy velocities, beyond the conception of any mortal, towards cloud nine; and thus, generating in the process mighty pillars of light equivalent to a massive artillery salvo - only in a reversed direction.

Effectively surrounding Sakahara would be, at least, eight of these - one of which was bound to strike Trotskaya directly, no matter which direction she was coming from. When it would, the Red Tigress would feel the force of the millennium's punch and an intense burning sensation - the power of each and any of the light pillars.

Indeed, Kuurei possessed a massive area of effect that made it practically inescapable from; however, it was not an all-powerful skill that could have ended the match before it could even begin, nor did it come without a price: it tapped too much into Sakahara's magical energy. Then again, for the whole match, he hadn't used any of his magic - that exact moment would be the perfect time.

And if Trotskaya was, somehow, still kicking even after a direct hit, he could still attempt the technique again; if he was to faint and his opponent could stand up, then at least his defeat would give him some invaluable experience in the long run.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Shinji Sakahara VS Elena Trotskaya ~

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Himeji Castle, Bizenmaru Garden

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All that Trotskaya could think of, even as the contours of the castle began to erupt all around her, was 'Crush the weakling!', while Excidium burrowed into Sakahara's torso with a visceral scrape. She could feel every bone beneath its weight crack and every inch of flesh carved sizzle, and loosed a vicious grin beneath her mask as the blade burst from his back. Pinned to the floor as Sakahara fell with Trotskaya, Excidium diving into the grass and its wielder twisting to jam the blade within earth and body, all hope of escape was lost for both him and her. But she, in her infinite, all-consuming wrath, sought no escape. Henceforth, there would be only death for the pair of them. She would either kill him now before a heat-ray exploded from the earthen core on top of her, or he would burn with her.

A single mind came to dominate Trotskaya's psyche. Fight. Survive. Kill. That was all that there was. No longer was there any higher purpose. No reason. No mercy. Even as she was swathed in the blazing fury of a blue supergiant erupting into a solar flare, she positioned herself on top of him, sword eschewed and fists chiselling away at Sakahara's face. No pain. No tiredness or numbness, even as her life support systems told tales of burning flesh and deteriorating structural integrity. Her world was watching the blond before her, as she punched with such a fiery anger and inhuman celerity.

This would be her only world, while she watched the enveloping blue prepare to wage apocalypse.

[Gigaverse]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Shinji Sakahara VS Elena Trotskaya ~

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Himeji Castle, Bizenmaru Garden

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Or was that too slow of him...? As precise as his timing could have been, he had only used his data from training sessions. He had managed to perform Kuurei at a much slower pace than anticipated, and for that, he was on the wrong end of an unrestrained beating. The Red Tigress was continuously punching her supposed prey, as wildly as her namesake animal.

But as it was, she wasn't quite the predator. Her act clearly spelt desperation. And still, her case was beyond saving: her foe was, after all, an Imperial Knight. Well before he even went through the training processes of the Order or became an Esquire, let alone a Knight, the blond - as a supposedly normal human - had endured and survived circumstances so much more horrifying, by a long shot, than what Trotskaya was subjecting him to.

Although he might have used up considerable strength to muster the attack, he could still manage. A person mimicking a wild animal wasn't going to bring him down any time soon.

With the striking force from the heavens, Sakahara returned his own punch against the Chthonian, forcefully removing her from the top of his body. His fist wasn't out of the blue, as he had aimed to redirect the warrior in red towards where one of the many light pillars were bound to shoot out from.

Then, once again, it was a matter of timing. Because even when the chaotic bombardment had begun, he would still have some control over their trajectories - the only one in harm's way would be his enraged opponent. Lying still with Excidium still going through his torso and connecting with the ground, Sakahara commenced the attack - which had by then gathered enough striking force to, at least, knock Trotskaya unconscious.

In the next moment, the sight of the entire arena being illuminated by a destructive yet warm blue, was a spectacle to behold. Within the chaos, Sakahara grabbed the hilt of Excidium, and in five seconds, pulled it away from both the grass and his body while he moved himself in the opposite direction. Soon, he was on his feet again, Excidium in hand.

Until he could see Trotskaya without consciousness, however, he would have to prepare to use everything he had - up to his opponent's very blade - to ensure victory.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Shinji Sakahara VS Elena Trotskaya ~

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Himeji Castle, Bizenmaru Garden

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Impossible...

Even with the azure, solar flames burning to Trotskaya's very core, the grasp of death was so very cold. The TITAN injections had long begun to wear off, subjecting her to all of hell's pains as cognition returned to hound her.

You should be dead by now...

This inhuman creature stood before her, as if completely unfazed by her assault, even Excidium turning to mock her as it was subverted to his grasp. SURELY he could not have long to live? Speared through the chest with her sword and face smashed to a hideous pulp?!

No further thought. Only silent darkness.

Once the subterranean eruptions finally subsided, what was left of the hitherto-undefeated Red Tigress was not even a finger, but a pile of metal ash. Before the gentle Japanese wind carried her remains to the heavens, Sakahara, assuming that he indeed was still alive, could have sworn that he spotted one last look of untethered hatred where her face had been amidst the black dust.

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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Bathed in the burnished estival glow of sunset, misted by saline spray from the lapis waters of the equatorial Atlantic, bobbing and cresting serenely upon the ocean's subtle oscillations, a hull of stoic, slate grey steel floated in morose monochrome, juxtaposed with the cheery colors frolicking in vivid delight about its austere design. A naval veteran of wars long past, the VMS Egress drifted in tranquil quiescence to the tack of the great ocean's whim. In her youth, the powerful warship was high queen of the seas, cutting chop and slicing surf, defying the will of the waters with ease whether it be against pounding hurricanes or in resounding battle. Now, retired into her twilight years, the decommissioned ship had quenched the nuclear fury of her engines, muzzled the bellowing cries of her weapons, caged the accipitrine howl of her aircraft, and relegated herself to a satisfied silence, content to subsume herself to the seas she once conquered.

As one of the few ships to be classified as a battlecarrier, the ship's construction organization was twofold. Dominating the stern portion of the ship, a dual-pronged airstrip provided runway enough for the multitude of STOVLs and VTOLs she served alongside, positioned atop a spacious internal hangar, vehicle depot, and well dock for the amphibious assaults she became so notorious for spearheading. The bow of the mighty naval vessel, meanwhile, was dedicated to the anterior half of her classification name; batteries of railgun artillery, arrays of VLS missile tubes, and scores of defensive laser CIWS and missile racks adorned the bowside deck of the ship, an impressive quantity of firepower that gave no shortage of poignancy to her former role. Nestled in between, the command tower peeked above the fray, obsolete TACDAT pylons and instruments sprouting from her crown. Having long bid farewell to the cluttered bustle of sailors and marines, her labyrinthine interior would now play host to one last scene of action.

Even with his own general dislike for sailing, Colonel Haivel Eposel could hardly avoid admiring the old ship. Once the capital ship of Vistora's primary Atlantic fleet during the Fall, she was a genuine piece of Vistoran military history, even with her vintage battle scars sintered over and former signs of habitation scrubbed clean. The sheer bulk of her hull attenuated any horrid sickness-inducing rocking into a series of gentle, gradual shifts, barely perceptible those not paying close attention. And the claustrophobic bowels, optimized for war, were of little concern to the similarly grizzled soldier; in his line of work, nightmarishly small spaces were butter and biscuits. Eyes flashing over his HUD, he grinned as his digital infiltration software gave him a comprehensive environmental sitrep; as one of Vistora's first highly automated ships, she was chock-full of computer-controlled systems to commandeer, and although, to his chagrin, the VSOP hadn't handed over the direct access keys to her systems, the outdated software should be a comparative trifle to crack.

Nevertheless, even his own skill at battle-rigging would be but one factor playing into the fateful outcome of his encounter. Another, needless to say, would be the acuity of his own combat expertise. Twenty-six years of service as an esteemed member of the VSOP had taught him volumes, not just about combat, but his own role in it as well. Indeed, the pentuagenerian's twenty-six years in the world's most exquisitely lethal special-operations force were relatively unique; as a Headhunter of the Gendarmerie's DIM Division, his active duty had taken him on treks not through the scorching barrens on the Namib desert nor the steamy tangle of the Bornean rainforest, but rather the streets and skyscrapers of his own home. The dryness beneath his feet had always been concrete and asphor, the jungle before him that of buildings of glass and steel. His responsibility had been to deal, in whatever manner necessary, with some of the most violently deranged individuals one was ever likely to encounter, surrounded on all sides not by wild animals or sheer cliff faces, but rather the infinitely more hazardous environment of densely packed urbania. Thus, the narrow, winding corridors of the VMS Egress were familiar fodder for the old soldier.

Finally, and most critically, there was his opponent. The crux of his success or failure. Regrettably, his minimal dossier on this Trofima Medveditsa was sparser than he would have preferred; in his line of work, information was everything. Variables unaccounted for ran the risk of costing the lives of both himself and the innocent civilians often peppering his common theater of battle. Mercifully, no civvie collateral was present on the ship this time around, but the outsized importance of knowledge remained constant all the same. Thus far, his awareness that his opponent was a Russian cyborg supersoldier already inculcated a silent desire for her weapon schematics. Surveillance, an option he preferred not to rely on when possible, seemed the only choice to collect more intelligence. Fortunately, the ship also happened to contain a convenient CCTV network he could tap into. Irritatingly enough, however, the fight organizers had insisted upon some antiquated method of battle commencement; greeting one's enemy on the field of battle. Already that precluded the element of total surprise he often relied on, but no matter; he could salvage such a scenario in due time. Checking the integrity of his ammunition supply and hefting his trusty shotgun, he wrenched open the dense steel portal leading onto the sternside flight deck and marched onto the asphor.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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"One minute until deployment, Lieutenant Medveditsa!"

"Good!" a hard East Siberian-accented voice called back to the chirp of the Ermakov Er-7 dropship's command AI. "Sergeant, you got that ammo-pack?"
"Yes, Ma'am!"

A soldier in dull-grey fatigues produced the requested item, a heavy dull-grey drum loaded to the brim with 7.62x54-millimetre rounds. He then carried it over to where a towering, effeminate figure loomed, wearing a dense, bristle-trimmed blue winter coat and bearing flowing blond hair.

"Take your coat off, Ma'am," the sergeant asked; the addressee of his command promptly shrugged off the apparel, unveiling a heavyset suit of burnished black armour. Several combat trophies, including a necklace consisting of bleached teeth and dog-tags once belonging to Europeans, Singaporeans and even a handful of Sidhae from her most recent adventure, adorned the heavy assault suit. The soldier carefully positioned the ammo drum onto a slot on the armour's back.

As he did so, the wearer of the armour suit decided to do one last weapons-check. In the place of the right forearm was a huge, silver-coloured power claw. The chin-section terminated in a deadly-sharp spike that reminded those who beheld it of a Classical warship's battering-ram, and poking out of the snout was the barrel of a massive, 60-millimetre cannon designed to fire 40-gauge canister shells, able to blow chunks out of flesh and locked doors alike with a single shot. The owner of the menacing augment, one Lieutenant Trofima Medveditsa of the Spetsnaz Alfa Group, had even painted a pair of crocodilian eyes on both sides of the top-section, throwing an ugly stare at whatever she levelled the arm against.

"Forty seconds until deployment!" the AI chirruped again.
"Fetch the chaingun-piece!" Medveditsa voiced a crisp order to the sergeant.
"Yes, Ma'am!"

She, meanwhile, straightened out her left hand so that it was flat and perfectly level with her arm. The armoured appendage at once split into three with a pneumatic hiss, and rapidly filling the gap was an amorphous, silvery mass of sparking, liquefied livingmetal. As it hardened, it adopted the shape of the receiver for a large weapon. What the weapon in question was became clear when the sergeant returned with the other module for the firearm: it was a four-barrelled chaingun chambered for the rounds carried by the drum.

"Thirty seconds until deployment!"
"Thank youuuu!" Medveditsa groaned with discomfort as the barrels, motor and trigger assembly were slotted into her arm. Of all of the many, many experiences that she had gone through as a soldier, fitting integrated weapons was arguably one of the most surreal. The claw was different: the claw had been part of her for as long as she could remember, having lost that arm in a fight with a wendigo long ago. Aside from having Colonel Golovkin detach it for maintenance, there had been very few occasions where she had had to reattach it...

"What's wrong, Ma'am?" the sergeant enquired, spotting the scowl that erupted across her face.
"Nothing, just caught my funny-bone, s'all!" the Lieutenant lied. What had caused her to scrunch her face with disgust was the reminder of Colonel Golovkin's fate, brought back up by thinking about her arm. Before the Flight, Medveditsa had never believed that there was any truth in the many rants that Kaffarov spouted. Now, after watching ... that, she believed every word of them. The Imperium had proven to be everything that he said it was - a murderous, malignant cancer that had to be suppressed wherever else it began to sprout, and ultimately destroyed if civilised society was to survive the next thirty years.

"Twenty seconds until deployment!"
The tweet of the AI brought her out of her wrath-infused thoughts, and she drew up a deep breath. The time to deploy had come. Hopefully, glorious battle would distract her from her newfound hatred...

---

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As he beheld the jacinth sunset sky, the descending yellow sun a mighty dome hovering over the oceanic horizon, what began as a faint rumble flowed into Eposel's ears. It then grew into a roaring crescendo, its source a boxy aircraft riding the cloudless summer heavens about a kilometre up. A puff of smoke, then a tubular object seemed to detach from the underside. What was it? A bomb? A care package?

Eposel activating his optic's zoom-function unveiled it to be neither. At the topside of what turned out to be a drop-pod, six airbrakes unfolded like the petals of an iron flower in blossom, righting the tumbling cylinder as it careened toward the flight deck of the ship. The air was filled in an instant with the thunderous howl of rocket motors, the pod slowing itself from velocities where hitting the floor would cause it to be crushed like a tin-can to a more sedate ten metres per second. On the pod's bottom, three landing struts unfurled to cushion its fall as it struck the carrier with a resonating metalloid thud.

The sudden ejection of the pod's door, kicked outward by the armoured sabaton of its occupant, ruined what would otherwise have been a graceful entry. With a most unsubtle orchestra of booming footsteps and whirring servos, Medveditsa stepped out of the pod to greet her teal-clad opponent. Her armour-plated great-helm remained clasped in her claw as the Atlantic wind galloped through her tucked-in locks of hair. She stopped about fifty metres from where the enemy was presently stood, eyes flashing azure blue with anticipation.

"SO!" Medveditsa called out with a smirk, beginning with a half-sarcastic: "I don't suppose my claw's new best friend happens to have a name?"

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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Eposel witnessed the thunderous capsule's precipitous descent with the practiced eye of a field combat analyst, vision tracing its plummet and surveiling the cracked indentations its landing left in the airstrip's tar-black asphor. With an inquisitiveness ever-increasing, he likewise observed his opponent's grandiloquent appearance, cybernetic foot punting the solid metal slab once constituting the drop-pod's hatch a fair distance from its former housing. With all the subtle eloquence of an aggravated rhinoceros, Medveditsa barged forth from her anisotropic enclosure and immediately set about brandishing her massive metal claw in Eposel's general direction.

"SO!" she hollered in a dense Russian accent, "I don't suppose my claw's new best friend happens to have a name?"

"Brash, confident, wholly unperturbed by the prospect of battle. Evidently pleased by the prospect, in fact. Sarcastic comment buoyed by mildly boastful egotism, but is otherwise good-natured. Sanity currently in question, but preliminary observations suggest a largely stable mindset barring outlook on violent behavior in combat scenarios. Further observation required."

Synapses sparked like semiconductors within Eposel's head, a nigh-instinctual reaction of axons and dendrites linked through countless psyche courses drilled into him over the course of his career. Far more information collection and contemplation would be necessary to formulate any manner of bespoke battle plan, but in circumstances such as his own, any start was a good one. His neurointegration suit conveyed his mental commands to his helmet, retracting his ocular visor and partially withdrawing his ventilated facemask. Eyes a misty cerulean of storm-darkened seas and mouth a sombre slash shadowed by a close stubble, Eposel's face already bore the perennial demons of his lengthy tenure as a Headhunter, only his irises' indefatigable analytic curiosity held a baleful thousand-meter stare at bay. Nevertheless, his stolid grimace had swiftly morphed into a modest grin, accompanied by a similarly temperate wave of his hand. Clearing his throat, he responded to the Russian in turn, the harshness of his backstreet Estuary long mellowed by his humble, soft-spoken disposition.

"'Ello to you too. Colonel Haivel Eposel's the name, but just Haivel or Ep works fine. How about you?"

He gestured politely towards the hulking Russian cyborg.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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"'Ello to you too. Colonel Haivel Eposel's the name, but just Haivel or Ep works fine. How about you?"

"Lieutenant Trofima Pavelovna Medveditsa, Special Purpose Guard Brigade Alfa Group," Eposel's addressee calmly returned the pleasantries. "AQ-One-Zero-One-Two-Nine-Six if you want the unit code, Two of Clubs for the nickname. Pick whichever's snappier for you."

Seeking a better look of her quarry, Medveditsa's mouth straightened out and eyes visibly dimmed, producing a look of inquisition.
"I won't bore you with all the usual grandstanding, since by the looks of it you've heard it all already," the Lieutenant enunciated, before her lips curved into a smile. "You and I both! If the pair of us live through this, we should grab a few drinks, tell each other war stories, the kind that'd bore all the kids to death..."

Her jovial manner of speaking betrayed little in the way of her analysis of Eposel. The KGB dossier had described him only as "a cross between Golovkin and Dmitriyeva", the Alfa Group juggernaut ergo expecting a certain degree of cyber-warfare to be involved in tandem with considerable firepower. She had been sure to turn off her open comms before deployment, denying her foe access to her powersuit through that way at least. Her cybernetics - again, inaccessible without physically pinning her down and opening her up with a surgeon's knife, something that she was secretly hoping that he would try to do for her own entertainment. The weapon in his hand, looking like a shotgun of some manner, looked incapable of penetrating the heavy armour that she was wearing, the 6B51-T model designed to laugh off much larger and deadlier weapon systems. Close quarters might be a problem, as may the results of his hacking the environment, but not a completely unsolvable one.

Satisfied with the potential outcome of the fight, Medveditsa raised her claw and slipped her helmet onto her head. The armoured viewports lit up a brilliant cerulean blue as soon as she did.
"Well!" announced the Lieutenant, voice rumbling with a metal grind as she spoke through the helmet's amplifier. "Ready when you are!"

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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"I won't bore you with all the usual grandstanding, since by the looks of it you've heard it all already," Lieutenant Madveditsa spoke frankly, bone-dry grin still resting on her lips, "You and I both! If the pair of us live through this, we should grab a few drinks, tell each other war stories, the kind that'd bore all the kids to death..."

A hearty chuckle gusted forth from the aging commando, genuine and clear.

"It would be my pleasure! Twenty-six years on the hunt have given me a tale or two to share. Though I've little doubt an experienced Russian such as yourself could guzzle your way through half my bank account in one sitting, I'll still propose a little wager; loser buys the drinks."

"Oho?" briskly sniggered Medveditsa, "That's a deal, then! I hope you won't mind selling your house to cover my tab." She slotted the cavernous bulk of her densely armored helmet over her face, modulated voice now grating across the asphor. "Well, ready when you are!"

Eposel nodded politely before reengaging his helmet's visor and mask. Twin pools of glistening azure glass slid over his face, dual obscura to the haunted irises peering through the laden vitreum. Behind the abyssal, soulless oculars and morose masking ventilator, the weary humility of an old soldier vanished, his razor shell of gelid, lethal focus all that remained perceptable.

"Much obliged."

Time was but a whetstone; the half-decade of existence to which Eposel soft-spokenly lay claim were but a slip of the hand against the iotic edge of his reactions, a nigh-incidental dulling utterly inconsequential in the face of six years of brutal VSOP Academy preparation and twenty-six years as the bearer of a name spoken of only in whispers by those whose presence denigrate humanity. An apex predator paragonal, a hunter whose prey boasted of their own deadliness. His reflexes honed after so many years to an exquisite point, his motor skills subtle and precise as a CVD articulator, his actions shed themselves of all hesitative burden and executed themselves flawlessly in rapid succession.

His left hand deftly brushed past his waist, seizing a smoke grenade from his ordnance pouch and underhand tossing the faceted cylinder high into the sky. Simultaneously, his right hand reaffirmed its clutch on the grip of his AM56 Vanguard shotgun and brought the hulking firearm level with his eyes; by the time his computational systems, by virtue of a prior command, detonated the grenade and flooded the atmosphere betwixt Vistoran and Mecharussian with a dense screen of IR-impermeable smoke, his belated left hand had met the shotgun at its slide and his right's index finger was twitching at the trigger. A searing belch of incandescent gas, a booming report of sonic refuse, and a solid slug of high-explosives packed inside a frangible case bloomed from the smoothbore barrel. Aimed directly at the hulking cyborg's legs, such a maneuver had been the first of Eposel's tactcal decisions; in direct combat, the aging commando hadn't a chance in hell of winning. His advantages were speed, stealth, and manipulation, advantages that required a concert of patience and time that weren't yet his to expend. In sending that volatile vector hurtling through the haze at her feet, he hoped to destabilize the comparative giant d perhaps even knock her off her feet. No injuries bar those to her pride would be sustained, but such was no matter; Eposel was merely buying time.

After registering the slug's shreiking detonation, Eposel immediately turned tail and fled, not bothering to wait for the smoke to clear and reveal the result of his efforts as he sprinted at full-tilt towards the ship's looming command tower. Bursting into the ashen confines of the vessel, he immediately hauled the dense steel door shut. His infiltration worm having bored its way into the block's compartmentalized security system, he ordered the door to lock itself fast; responding to his will, the door's actuated deadbolt slid into place, sealing the span between himself and Medveditsa with six centimeters of solid, nautical-armor steel.

"That ought to delay her for a minute or so. Bloody Nora, I'm going to have to be careful around a beast like her. Now, to find somewhere to fortify up and start trying to crack the central systems."

Hustling down a flight of stairs leading into the battlecarrier's winding bowels, Eposel swiftly scanned a three-dimensional layout plan of the ship he'd had the foresight to download before the battle. If he didn't stray too far from the central tower where the security protocol module lay, he could route his worm through the onboard systems and compromise the whole ship's digital systems. At that point, Medveditsa would no longer be fighting a lone VSOPerative so much as the VMS Egress in its entirety. Perhaps. All was strictly contingent on time, time to locate and reach an optimal position, time to establish as zone of control, and time to burrow through the outdated, yet nevertheless extensive, encryptions and firewalls encapsulating the ship's proverbial mind. Time he might not even possess, if the horrendous screech of the steel portal yielding slowly to an onslaught unseen was any indication.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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An ear-splitting pop resounded from Medveditsa's left leg, the impact point of Eposel's explosive slug; the electroreactive shin-guard soaked up most of the blast, but it still sent a reverberation through the armoured appendage that mandated a stagger backward. The first shot of the battle had been fired.

The Two of Clubs, quickly recovering from the piecemeal attack, raised her chaingun to retaliate, a light scream resounding through the air as the barrels spun up. But somewhat to her dismay, she found herself presented with a cloud of infrared-impermeable fog, the apparent produce of one of Eposel's smoke grenades. Switching her vision to ultraviolet proved somewhat unhelpful, for the operator had already made his exodus, and so she revved down her chaingun. The sight of the closed door, along with the metal ringing of a deadbolt, gave her a good idea of where he may have run off to, however.

Each footstep a resonating metal thud, Medveditsa proceeded to the door, eyes in her helmet examining it with extension. A two-by-one metre armoured steel door, armour rating likely to be slightly over 50RHAe - she had encountered plenty of them before, but this was not exactly going to be a plywood door either. If she remembered correctly, these types of door could be pulled straight off as soon as the top hinge was shot off. The hinge in question was likely to be ... here.

With a sharklike grin, Medveditsa reared her claw back and lunged for the designated breaching position, jamming the durasteel spike on the end of it deep into the metal with an ironclad thump. Sixty millimetres in depth, at least. That should have been enough...

From the cannon sounded a cascading, thundering explosion that heralded the ejection of a 40-gauge canister shell, one of two types that Medveditsa had brought with her. Against such a tempest of sharp, diamond-shaped carbon-flechette shot, the hinge stood little chance of survival. That much became evident when Eposel, already deep within the bowels of the carrier, caught wind of a fanfare of metallic ringing, the falsetto of a certain hinge crashing to the floor, concluded by a grand threefold succession of thunderous metallic crashes. The first was as if someone was trying to shoulder straight through the door; the second was another that signified the success of that endeavour; and the third that same door striking the floor of the ship.

Medveditsa's momentum brought her to a halt in the corridor that just a moment ago Eposel had traversed, the cranes of the cannon's autoloader already sliding another canister round into the open top-port. Seeing a myriad of potential entry points where he could have gone and having no idea of which was correct, she scowled. There was one recourse, however: the SONAR scanner built into every Mecharussian troopers' helmet. Though loud, it was effective, and the Lieutenant was hardly going for subtle in this scenario. Two pings should have been enough to get a vague idea of where Eposel may have been hiding, or at least narrow down the possibilities enough so that she could locate him without help...

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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Like hammer upon monastic gong, the great resonant clang of the laden slab of steel impacting the floor saturated the air, a wince-inducing crash clueing the fleet-footed soldier in to his pursuer's proximity. Eposel gritted his teeth, soles of his armored boots clomping along the striated ceramic flooring of the battlecarrier's belowdecks. Already, a concrete plan of action had begun to nucleate in his mind, an intertwining progression of steps originating with his current circumstances and terminating in his victory. Should all go well, of course.

"Current task; evade pursuer. Detection capabilities currently unk--"

PING!

The shrill whine of an emitted sonic pulse ricocheted through the acoustically reflective web of rooms and hallways, followed in rapid procession by a follow-up in identical kind. His hair-trigger senses wracked his body with a momentary, nigh-immeasurable spasm, as if the SONAR ping itself had reverberated through his body.

"Revised; Medveditsa apparently has sonic mapping. My armor's anechoic coating should help obfuscate my position when I'm stationary... but she has likely already noticed the single moving form in close proximity. Evasion contingent on deception; closest ideal location is the medical facility approximately two minutes from my positon. Oh, bugger me, she's approaching fast."

Eposel's TACDAT suite outlined the hulking cyborg's position on his HUD map overlay, the rapid and erratic movements of her representative little red blip fully in sync with the cacophony of inglorious crashes and irritated grunts emanating from somewhere behind Eposel, her no-frills careen through the ship's vast interior roughly approximating the sounds of an irate bear caught in a hardware store. Moreover, in comparison to the two-legged tank hot on his heels, Eposel would have chosen the bear as an adversary ten times out of ten. His accelerating tilt bringing him into a long corridor strung with uncannily homogeneous bunkrooms, Eposel ducked into one of the quarters, infiltration worm slamming and locking the door behind him automatically.

"Interior walls are thin enough to cut through with my knives. Perhaps I can use this room as a hotbox, to delay and perhaps even injure her."

Eposel drew his Hunter knives from thier sheathes with a barely perceptible schink. Moment's later, his DNI-relayed commands catalyzed the circuitry embedded in his knives to surge with electricity, arcing between two high-voltage electrodes and channeled along a thin paramagnetic corridor shrouding the edge of its TiC blade. Luminescent cyan seared along the knives, a vibrant concoction of ionized air heated to a few thousand degrees centigrade. Eposel jammed the tips of the long-bladed combat knives into a bare patch of wall--certainly a scarcity in such a room, given the minuscule bunks packed like tins of anchovies as high as the ceiling--and tore twin incandescent rents in the polymeric composite wall.

Upon carving a rough lozenge into the paneling, he shouldered the excised piece from its perch and stepped into a mirror image of the room he'd exited instants hence. Shaking his head in pity for the Global Coalition marines this great vessel ferried in claustrophobic conditions during the Fall (very few of whom were Vistoran VSOPeratives), Haivel unclipped from his belt another grenade--this time incendiary--and tossed it at the ceiling, where its adhesors engaged and stuck it fast, a malformed canister squatting silent and unobtrusive, like a spider ready to pounce. Eposel stepped from the bunkroom, locking its door as well, and began to hustle towards the ship's onboard medical facility, all the while watching that furious red blip barge closer and closer towards his prospective trap...

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

The booming report of heavy footsteps, succeeded by the ringing of another door being shunted open, announced Medveditsa's arrival at the barrack where she had located Eposel earlier. Surveying the room before her, a loud groan resounded from her helmet as she realised that she was going to have to file her way through the assorted tightly-packed beds - otherwise, her armour would have no chance of getting through it. The first curious sight to catch her eye was a large, man-shaped hole in the wall - good, thought the Two of Clubs, for it was a clear indicator that she was on the right track. Pushing her own way through the thin metallic wall, grunting as it creaked and bent, she found herself in a simulacrum of where she had just been moments before. Her eyes darted across the second barrack, searching for any hint of her enemy's presence in here.

And that was when she looked up and saw it. Embedded in the ceiling was a dreadfully familiar cylindrical object, one that forced Medveditsa's eyes open with surprise and shock.

"Oh, for crying out fu-"

A thunderous bang shuddering through the metal walls of the carrier, signifying the detonation of Eposel's incendiary grenade, drowned out the conclusion to the Lieutenant's exclamation. What followed for the next three minutes was the same squealing racket of shuffling beds. This time, it was buttressed by a string of furious Russian curses, each bearing enough juicy expletives to wilt the ears of the hardiest Imperial Vanguard drill instructor. The cacophony reached its climax with a tempestuous twin thump on the door, shortly followed by a resonating, ursine roar of rage and frustration, and then by additional metallic crashes on the door, yielded with the ferocity of an artillery barrage.

Finally, the door gave way, falling off of its hinges and allowing the accumulated smoke from burning white phosphorous to erupt from within and flood the hallways. Out of the barrack emerged an enraged Medveditsa, panting and huffing as a sea of flames turned and tossed behind her, as if having arisen from the blazing waters of the Phlegethon. Damage sustained was largely superficial, scorch-marks blending in to near-perfection with the black paint of the heavy assault suit. The majority of the destruction had been wrought on the suit-wearer's already volatile temperament - and upon the hapless barrack as a direct product of said temperament.

Once again confounded by Eposel's disappearance, Medveditsa opted to deploy four additional SONAR pings: two for each route down the hallway, each ping surging through the carrier as if in echo. Wherever he was now, and assuming that she could accurately pinpoint his whereabouts, he was most certainly in for it big time.

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Eposel's eyes flickered back and forth, glancing first at the volumetric map overlay displayed on his HUD, then back to his present locality of his suit-augmented hustle through the corridors of the ship, then back to the overlay. True to his prognostications, the hulking Russian cyborg had followed his exact path through the bunkrooms, tearing her own, significatly larger rent through the wall in seconds and barging headlong into the room he had booby-trapped. That little red blip's momentary hesitation was as adequate a cue as any; the next instant, his TACDAT suite indicated a successful detonation. Consequently, his audio feed registered the bullwhip crack and subsequent earsplitting screech of the mine's incendiary concoction.

Thermotex paste, ignitene gel, and shrapnel pellets of various of pyrophoric compounds blossomed outward on a flame front of solar temperatures, incinerating much of the bunkroom's contents and flooding it with toxic smoke and burning refuse. Eposel's minor victory wasn't to last, however; after a few seconds of furious pounding, the locked door buckled and crumpled like a tin can, shouldered off its hinges d sent claging to the floor. A dense plume of smoke and an equally repugnant string of florid Russian spilled from the annihilated room, Medveditsa's molten temperament fully audible to Eposel even across several corners and down eight dozen meters of corridor.

"Bollocks, I think I've just made her angrier. She'll be hard to shake, no doubt. Almost there."

Hacking his way past one more door, he burst into the VMS Egress' onboard infirmary, skidding to a stop and casting his gaze around. Although a far cry from sumptuous, it had been jam-packed with the absolute cutting edge of medical technology for its day, designed to handle the constant, high-volume patient flux of wartime. Dominating two storeys' worth of space, the highly automated facility was hardly in want of exploitable features; an entire quadrant consisted of robot-assisted operating tables virtually swarming with medical articulator arms, while the opposite wall was dedicated solely to housing row upon row of recuperation pods. Two industrial-size articulators dangled from tracks on the ceiling; designed to ferry patient bed modules to and from various points in the facility like cargo pallets, they would certainly make for efficacious weapons in a pinch.

The sound of two more sonic pings reverberating through the ship's superstructure reminded Eposel that time remained a resource he could scarcely afford to waste. Drawing his shotgun, he sprinted over to the far end of the infirmary, crouching between two crisp hospital beds and activating his active camouflage. A ghostly wave of azure washed over his armored form, followed by a shimmery semi-nothingness, concealed to all but the most persistent of seekers. Meanwhile, his software's diagnostics protocol identified a myriad of other potentially useful details; a motorized cargo trolley stacked high with boxes of medical supplies, a procession of radioclave sterilizers in the biolaboratory near the entrance, and a bulky oscillation tomography chamber squatting in a far corner. A metal staircase meanwhile led to the floor level just below the deck, a potential escape route should such become necessary.

"Shite, if she's brassed off now, I can hardly imagine what she'll be like once she steps foot in here."

While his eyes were intently trained on the minimap overlay on his HUD, tracking that ever-approaching angry crimson dot, he commanded his infiltration virus to begin cracking the medical facility's central security node, boreing an access route into yet another singular compartment of the ship's digital security systems in preparation for his encounter.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

The preciousness of Eposel's time could not have been rendered more apparent as the crescendo of tonitruous footsteps surged ever nearer to the infirmary, eventually stopping just where Medveditsa had last pinpointed him. As the rumble of ironclad storm-clouds came to a sudden halt, superseded by the squeak of the opening door he had neglected to lock, he had only to glance over his shoulder to sight the hulking frame of his foe in the doorway, crocodilian azure optics scanning the room as she searched for her sought-after prey.

The door ahead, leading to a set of steps, was still open. That was good. It was some indicator that Eposel may not have run off. The Lieutenant's eyes ran across the array of what reminded her of cryptosleep caskets. Her first presumption was that he was hiding in there, waiting to spring out with a combat knife and attack her head on. That was too simple though, and a direct attack did not seem to be the Colonel's style - if he was planning an ambush, surely he would have done so in that hotbox that he had rigged up. Her better judgement dedicated her mind, therefore, to the possibility that he might be hiding somewhere else. But where?

Briefly, the temptation to spray the room with bullets entered Medveditsa's thought pattern, but until she was certain of his presence in here, that option was to be considered a far too risky waste of ammunition. Perhaps he may have gone through the door down the stairs, though if that was the case, surely she could hear him running. She opted to give the room another look, switching her optical augmentations to infrared as they scoured the vast contours of the infirmary.

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Eposel's excimeric concentration ebbed for not a second, its fluvial shift between minimap overlay and live visual perspective seamless and rapid. Rolling thunder, pouring rain, Medveditsa's ursine imposition into the medical bay carried with it all the force of a surging stormcloud, ready to pulverize all within her sight with a hail of bullets. Even her guttural growls were audible through the dense plating of her armored helm; at this moment, attempting to confront her head-on would see his fight brought swiftly to a close, ending with her standing over his riddled, smoking corpse. An end he had every intention of avoiding by virture of tactics both cunning and surreptitious.

Towards that end, as he observed with significant intent her ostentatious approach, he had begun to cycle the radioclaves just next to the door, overriding their safety redundancies and flooding their internal chambers with scalding jets of chemical mist.

"Just a little closer... a little closer..."

Medveditsa strode across the infirmary's threshold, coming to a halt perhaps a meter past the doorway and pausing cautiously. Her vision swept the span of the medbay's facilities, her sight a piercing inquiry interrogating for his position, stowed like a poltergeist in that corner. Her standard optics predictably revealing nothing corporeal, she switched over to thermal IR, the stellar cerulean of her viewports flashing a telltale crimson. An attempt in vain, as Eposel's camouflage was not so primitive as to reveal his locaton to a neighboring electromagnetic spectrum. Nevertheless, as she turned her head to the right, the already irate Russian cyborg noticed a distinct blob of searing white emanating from a bank of cabinets.

"Cheers, mate."

At Eposel's behest, the overpressured chambers disengaged their locks, detonating like ersatz bombs. A nigh-solid wall of superheated steam billowed from the flung-open chamber hatches and walloped Medveditsa with the force of a stick of dynamite cooking off. The clenched fist of searing aerosol wasn't quite enough to topple Medveditsa in all its force, thanks in no small part to her suit's considerable inertia alone, but nevertheless impacted her with sufficient oomf to send her stumbling. Eposel's software buzzed with activity; its first relayed command was to slam the door behind Medveditsa, locking it fast and barring any immediate retreat from the fast-ensuing pandemonium. The next moment, he'd remotely hijacked the bulky industrial articulators dangling from the ceiling, servomotors whizzing as they descended like vultures upon the briefly disoriented cyborg and seized her by the shoulders, slamming her bodily into the door so hard the back of her armor left an indentation in the steel.

In the next step of his environmental onslaught, Eposel proceeded to commandeer the motorized trolley, grinding its rubber wheels against the once-pristine medical facility's sterile steel floor and sending its laden bulk careening towards the Russian, still firmly pinned against the opposite wall. Inundated with cargo both comparably dense and evidently prone to sloshing, the cart's considerable mass hurtled into her like a freight train's locomotive. A string of curses foul enough to spoil fresh milk blasted from behind the stack of boxes. As much was swiftly drowned out by the succeeding stage of Eposel's plan. Aiming his shotgun directly at the cargo load's center of mass, he fired another explosive slug.

Upon impact, a supersonic shock front of heat and shrapnel bloomed outward, tearing the boxes' thin polymer composition to shreds... and eviscerating the plastic bags full of saline solution within. A tide of salty water burst free of its confines and sloshed all about, dousing the armor of the supremely vexed Trofima Medveditsa and spreading a large puddle across the ground. Eposel transitioned instantaneously to his final stage; slapping his shotgun back onto his hardpoint, he tensed and widened his now-empty palms. Black and silver plating split apart and slid aside at various points on his armored gloves, revealing a series of high-current electrodes dotted with azure LEDs and sparking with electricity. Unhesitant, unmerciful, he slammed his palms onto the ground, submerging them in the puddle's edge before letting loose a titanic surge of power.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

To say that Medveditsa was "supremely vexed" by this development was to put it in terms with equivalent weightlessness to a feather amidst a cluster of osmium bricks. Ineffably-furious, wind-knocked and electrically-charged osmium bricks...

An ear-shredding scream, the loudspeaker-reinforced cacophony forcing Eposel to picture an insane banshee trying to copulate with a chainsaw, resounded through the infirmary. Forks of arcing, snapping electricity flashed all around her armour, throwing themselves around the Two of Clubs like serpent's flickering tongues. Just at that moment, one of the articulated arms rotated around to meet the sparking, shrieking goliath, seeking to crush the life out of her. An endeavour that was curtly halted when, in a stunningly-fast motion, the medical arm was seized, locked in the reptilian jaws of Medveditsa's power-claw.

"YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHHH!!!!"
Without as much as a yoctosecond of coherent thought, the Two of Clubs screeched with coalesced pain and rage as she closed her arm up. An unholy grinding racket, followed by the squeaking crunch of metal being bent and broken, filled in the air what her mad bellowing did not as she easily bit the arm off. Then she turned her head upon Eposel, blue-flaring supergiants for eyes locked onto an attacker who could now be viewed as clearly as the sun on an African summer's day.

By the time Medveditsa had raised her left arm, the chaingun fused to it had already begun to spin, baying like a foxhound calling for its mistress to set it loose. This she did without consideration for the damage that she was about to unleash; her wild, savage screaming submerged below a thundering, howling roar. Tungsten carbide-tipped bullets leapt from the assembled tetrarchy of gun-barrels at one thousand a minute, the sought-after prey of these armour-piercing piranhas being the upstart who had dared to assault their mistress.

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

A revenant's howl, inculcated to its basal essence with tortured fury the strength of ten thousand molten hells, assailed Eposel's mind and body with its petrifying resonance. Medveditsa, caught amidst a spider's web of jagged voltaic arcs tearing rents through the air across her armor, thrashed most viciously against the articulators' regent clutch, the crocodilian maw of her crusher claw snapping wildly at the robotic vise pinning her fast. Serrated alloy teeth, so designed as to meet the generalized criterion of ripping shit up, grated against the articulator's shell as she clamped the appendage with pressures obscene. An almighty wrenching force accompanied by a terrific scream nigh sonic in its manifestation saw the articulator's chassis and components groan, buckle, shatter, and split with the screech of grinding metal. Medveditsa had torn the hefty robotic appendage clean off its mounting, tossing its sparking corpse to the floor with a sharp CLANK and shouldering free of the second arm.

"Cor blimey, this woman is mental."

Haivel extracted nary a precious iota's worth of temporal deficit in resorting to his tried-and-tested method of dealing with adversaries of Medveditsa's flavour; fleeing. Or rather, providing ever more sources of irritation for the hulking bionic Russian woman, then turning tail and running. The braked barrel of his Vanguard shotgun cruelly spat thrice in rapid succession, dense buckshot pellets spewing like epithets given painfully corporeal form towards Medveditsa's face. Obviously inadequate, insofar as armor penetration was concerned, but such was hardly the point; within their collective mass, each metallic cloud hurtled forth and impacted with impulses kinetically impolite, whipping and pummeling at Medveditsa's head like solid swings from a hammer. The sudden assault shook and rattled her already shock-addled senses, throwing her world into a tumble-dryer and kicking that dryer off a cliff.

Her rage unbridled, Medveditsa belted forth a throaty growl, reciprocated in turn by the piercing whine of her arm-mounted rotary machine gun revving up. Neither knowing nor caring where precisely her quarry lay, she saturated the air with a chaotic hailstorm of high-calibre bullets. Chased by the thunder of gunfire, Eposel was already dashing like mad for the upper exit. Preferring to rely on the precision engineering of his suit's state-of-the-art accoutrement, Eposel jerked his fist towards the frame of the still-faraway door. A studded mechanism shaped vaguely like a broadhead arrow point blitzed from a magnetic aperture on his forearm, trailing behind it a thin cord of interlatticed black fiber. The dart impacted the doorframe's ledge and deployed, geometry-variable grapnel barbs seeking out the best configuration and instantly locking fast. A torque winch spun up like a centrifuge, reeling in the line and yanking the commando in moments to the doorway, unlatched and opened compliments of his infiltration worm.

As he blazed straight over the perforated steel-frame staircase leading up to the door, he let fall from his grasp another grenade, concussive fragmentation this time. Milliseconds later he had vaulted through the doorframe, and had only just recovered his stride when a stray bullet from Medveditsa's flailing lambast managed to clip him on the shoulder. As the AP round glanced off the plating of his suit armor, shearing a significant groove into the refractory ceramic, it jarred the man from head to toe; a poignant reminder that being caught under direct fire from her guns would result in death gut-wrenchingly swift. Swinging the portal shut behind him, he detonated the bomb, shearing a blackened crevice in the thin metal framework and shredding the staircase to ribbons. Her direct route to him now inaccessible, Medveditsa would be forced to circumvent the stairs and find an alternate route. Such would be a time consuming process, giving Eposel ample opportunity to make his way towards his next destination; the internal hangar and vehicle bay, where he would set to work peeling away the ship's layers of security. Soon enough, he would be in command...

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Her opponent having announced his disappearance with the ringing boom of an explosive, Medveditsa ceased her assault, the diminuendo of her luminescent gun barrels revving down interspersed with the heavy grate of cathartic breathing. With her head screwed back on, she took in the absolute carnage of destroyed bedsits and ruined medical equipment before her eyes.

Okay! Claw, check. Gun, check. Ammunition, check. Armour, check. Sanity, check. Alright, I'm good...

With that curt self-assessment, Medveditsa turned her attention to where Eposel may have gone. Each powerful step marked by a gentle splash through the saline still on the floor, she pulled open the door through which he departed ... and found the stairs blown to pieces, impossible to traverse. This was problematic, especially since he had taken the liberty to close the door above, meaning that she could not even send a SONAR pulse after the commando. As a result, the Lieutenant began to consider where her enemy may have disappeared to. His style was for obvious reasons setting up devious traps. So he would have to go somewhere large, open and chock-full of machinery...

The hangar. At least, that was her first guess. With Eposel's most likely location having been figured out for herself, Medveditsa now had the task of planning out her next course of action. Go for the predictable option: make her way to the hangar, where she could face him in the open, along with whatever rotten tricks he had planned for her. Or, play it safe, find the power source, and pull the plug, denying him access to his toys but at the same time risking the destruction of the whole ship as a result of a mechanical incompetence-induced nuclear explosion.

A combination of the two options was in order, Medveditsa thought. Head for the hangar, but find out where Eposel was first and see what it was he was planning. Though in her heavy, clanking armour stealth was out of the question, the Two of Clubs still had a few tricks up her sleeve to present from her past. Now, for the Herculean labour of actually getting to the hangar...

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Eposel's battle-hewn intellect ground its gears in a flurry of tactical calculation, routing through an algorithmic list of actions and outcomes. Proximate evaluation had revealed some invaluable information about his opponent; in contravention to her incredibly forthright style of doing battle, Medveditsa was no fool. The safest assumption to make was that she knew where he was headed, and that only the ship's winding geometry would keep her at bay. A significant temporal fillip nonetheless, but Eposel could not afford to become complacent despite having evaded her for now. Once he reached the hangar, he would have to set to work as swiftly as possible in dismantling the Egress's central security node. That would give him access keys to all of the internal compartmentalized systems as well as systemic functions, such as the onboard surveillance, security, and even power systems. A potent tool in the hands of battlefield manipulator of his calibre.

His first order of business would probably be to start up the ship's fusion reactors. As it was, the ship was coasting on its auxiliary power generators; such was enough to keep the lights burning and doors swinging, and supply the more critical internal systems with enough juice to function, such as the medical bay, all of the major energy-guzzling applications were in hibernation. Should he boot up the battlecarrier's beating heart of fusile fire, its every function--main guns, propulsion screws, eveyrthing--would be his to command. At least, theoretically. A step up from hypothetically it might have been, but Eposel's head was already churning with contingencies should the crux of his plan fail to come to fruition.

Diligently tracing his way down the path delineated to him by his battlefield diagnostics software, eyes occassionally flickering to his little avatar-symbol gliding through the volumetric model of the ship's interior, Eposel gradually approached the ship's sprawling internal aircraft hangar. Blood pumping, chest heaving, the aging colonel's rhythmic commando jog sprited him past chamber after chamber, closer and closer, until but one more hatch stood in his way. Hacking his way past the lock and bursting through, he entered the hangar... and couldn't help but gasp, ever so slightly. It wasn't so much the vastness that impressed upon him a sense of surprise--although that, in addition to the fact that it was merely the upper of two massive internal bays, the lower being for amphibious landing craft and land vehicles, carried its own impact--it was that the hangar was full.

It was almost as if he had been whisked back in time, to the eve of the Assault on Charleston Harbour, or some other famous battle during the Fall. Vistoran VS-04 Corvistus fighter jets lay, neatly tesselated, in alternating rows along the hangar floor, while a line of HC-59 Nereid troop transport helicopters squatted motionlessly on the near side of the canopied aircraft bay's span. AWACS, anti-sub aeroplanes, and a menagerie of other utility craft were smattered around the asphor swath, all of them relics of a time mercifully long gone. Nowadays, most of them would see usage solely as obsolete museum pieces, but Haivel's mind was already contemplating the possibilities they provided. Lining the hangar's perimeter, the gaping portals leading to the exterior aircraft elevators remained shuttered, deactivated along with the ship. Likewise, the gigantic gantry-crane robotic arms, designed for picking up and moving palettes of thermobaric bombs and large portions of aircraft fuselage, lay recessed within their slots, inactive for now.

Eposel wasted no time in gawking at the spectacle before him; immediately, he vaulted the railing of the upper catwalk on which he had entered, falling two storeys and impacting the solid blacktop floor with a clunk, both feet down and one hand to the ground. Speed augmented by the myofibrils lacing his suit, he sprinted to the far end of the hangar, towards the stern of the ship, weaving in between the palettes stacked with fuel canisters and ordnance, ducking underneath the jutting wings and tails of jets, dodging the recessable support machines dotting the ground, until he reached the tapered end of the hangar. Several hydride converters stood partially fused to the wall, towering up to the ceiling and providing within their tangle of pipes and cabling a momentary haven, from which he could tunnel his way to the ship's dormant mind. Without the primary power on, the converters would be inactive, inert, and empty, safely free of the volatile hydrogen gas they processed until he so willed otherwise.

All in all, he supposed it was in his best interests to avoid detonating the munitions speckling the hangar at all costs; such could set off a chain reaction, engulfing the sternside half of the ship in a ball of flame and ending the campaigns of both contestants in a flash. Even with the anti-cookoff measures incorporated into the missiles and bombs, their arrangement--completely contradictory to real wartime doctrine--made them a cataclysm in waiting. For now, he would have to hope that his stealth and hacking celerity were adequate to accomplish his task before he was hunted down. Settling into a nook behind one of the converters, he opened up his system's command-line interface and took semi-manual control of his infiltration worm, routing all the way to the bridge's security node. Cracking his knuckles, he began to guide the hacking algorithm through the central system's security layers, intervening when necessary and slowly making his way deeper into the network.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Nineteen minutes would separate Eposel's arrival in the hangar from Medveditsa's, this temporal obstacle conjoined to the labyrinthine corridors of the carrier in their collective barrier towards another clash between the two. Navigating a hulking warship was no easy task, especially one of a design unfamiliar to the Mecharussian Armed Forces. The Two of Clubs predicted that she could make her way through an Imperial Ozymandias-class supercarrier in half an hour, provided that she was not presented with any of the vessel's fearsome internal defences. In breach-and-clear simulations, she would always have to contend with not just the thousands of irritable, well-armed Frenkish Naval Infantry aboard one, but also sentry turrets, hidden flamethrowers and directional tripmines to impede her path. So far, she had not happened upon anything of that like as of yet, but the caution that she adopted in ensuring that Eposel had not left any further unpleasant surprises behind in his exodus probably tacked another five minutes onto the journey.

Finally, however, she arrived, peeling the doorway to the main hangar open with a mighty creak and looming from a walkway over its contents. This was the area that Medveditsa had calculated to be the most likely for Eposel to be, given that it was large and open ... and, much to her complete chagrin, lots and lots of things to manipulate.

"Awwwww, fuck."
Such was the resonant groan that ensued from the Two of Clubs' helmet, her fully expecting to be accosted and attacked by everything in the room at once. Those hanging robotic arms, dangling from a gantry frame upon the ceiling like the voracious, waiting jaws of a Lovecraftian classic, looked particularly unpleasant. Now came the difficult bit: finding, and more importantly reaching, Eposel before he could bring those wretched things online to use against her. This she decided before making any further moves...

Three short, ringing SONAR pings this time, each one directed towards a specified point. Two amidst the cluster of disused aircraft and the third toward what looked somewhat like a control room. She also took into account the copious quantities of ammunition and explosives lying about the hangar. A clever and potentially deadly trap of her own, yet also a great danger should Eposel utilise them against her. Now came the waiting game, however. The pings would be reporting their findings to her azure HUD shortly...

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

---

VMS Egress

---

Eposel's nimble senses, well acquainted as they were with his neurointegrative controls, deftly manipulated his HUD's simulated console interface, tunneling ever deeper into the ship's security network. A comprehensive cyberinfiltration curriculum, crammed into his skull during his Academy years and progressively topped off over the long course of his career, had equipped him with the repertoire of skills necessary to complement his sweeping spectrum of automated software. In cracking the Egress' digital shell, they did the bulk of the grunt work; all he had to do was guide them along.

"Ech, thank the skies they codify historical system vulnerabilities in my program database."

The resonant clang of a heavy steel portal being shoved agape shuddered hrough his audio feed, triggering his high-alert detection systems and updating his HUD minimap, the blinking red dot demarcating his enemy's position now reestablished. Three sonic emmissions, now familiar fodder to soldier and system alike, rippled from their point of origin, their reconstructive resolution decaying wih each haphazard ricochet. Eposel tensed, now acutely aware that his surplus of time had begun to run dry. Thus far, he was conceled well enough to avoid detection. Nevertheless, expediencey was of the essence.

Clearance escalation complete. System access granted. Rootkit installation commenced. ETC 3 minutes.

Eposel gritted his teeth, inhaling, then exhaling slowly. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he shut off his console interface, restoring his external visual feed. His work now complete, all he had to do was hunker down and survive. Systemic access to the battlecarrier's controls may not guarantee his victory, but the advantages it would bestow upon him could predicate an immense shift in the tide of battle. Senses keen and focus honed, he crept from his hiding spot at the hangar's far end, drawing the both of his revolvers in anticipation.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

---

~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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"Blargh..." so ensued a throaty growl from Medveditsa's helmet, one uttered in frustration. Her SONAR pinger had failed to return anything, more likely than not on account of the hangar's advanced size. If Eposel was in here, then he was hiding somewhere, motionless. If not, then she had more searching to do along this infernal ship, an inherently laborious task without the prospect of being surprised and killed by some trap exploding out of the vent or something of that order. She decided to run one more visual scan of the room from her current perch, looming over the hangar like an eagle on the watch for her prey...

There. It was a momentary flash of dark turquoise, but there it was: something was moving in the aeronautical iron undergrowth, on the hangar's far side. A devilish grin flew up Medveditsa's cheeks at the thought of locating her prey, but her mind ran through plenty of risk assessments. Perhaps this was a trick, some manner of hologram intended to distract her.

What would Dmitriyeva do? The answer to the Lieutenant's question about what dreadful digital cards the Joker might play was most likely just what she had assessed. It was difficult to compare how Mecharussian cyberwarfare tactics and Vistoran ones operated, but Medveditsa remembered the last time she watched Dmitriyeva in action, in Singapore. She was a dreadful shot and a mediocre close-combatant, but with her sentient AI-controlled hack programmes, she was the black widow that lurked amidst the World Wide Web, lurking in wait for whatever hapless fool stumbled into her hunting grounds. So the more conventionally-inclined Two of Clubs knew to be wary around hackers. Even if denied access to one's cybernetics and communications, they could still turn every electronic item in the room into a literal killing machine - even, as one hapless Stratocrat back in the day discovered, an electric toaster-cum-improvised explosive device, courtesy of Dmitriyeva rerouting kilowatts of power through the mains to the aforementioned toaster.

From that, Medveditsa decided that it was far better to take the chance and eliminate the hacker Eposel as quickly as possible. Having vaulted the fence into the hangar turned arena and landed with a thunderous clang, she proceeded to where she had last sighted that greenish-blue flicker that hinted to Eposel's whereabouts, weapons ready to unleash hell at the first sign of danger.

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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From his precipitous vantage halfway up the cavernous hangar's port side wall, adhered to the sheer swath of plated steel like a certain arachnid superhero in circumstances most ersatz. In such a situation, only from the polyspectral shroud enswathing his corpus could he derive a semblance of cover. A martial discipline had consumed his body, paralyzing his muscles and drawing down his breathing to a shallow, even oscillation, even as his conscious focus was directed elsewhere; namely, manipulating his reconnaissance drone from afar. Deployed into its stationary, turret-esque permutaion, the unobtrusive little device was currently squatting in the landing gear hub of a comatose VQ-122 UAV, its compact holoprojector casting a volumetric approximation of Eposel's uncloaked figure, skulking about the lines of aircraft. Close inspection would reveal a fuzzy, flickering haze of low-resolution voxels, but such was of little consequence; Eposel's goal was a far cry from cinematic, as he merely sought to divert the reaving mechatronic hulk of a woman clomping conspicuously across the hangar floor. Sure enough, upon spotting the transigent spectre crouching beside the tail end of a Corvistus jet, Medveditsa had readied her arsenal and begun her approach.

Installation complete. Systemic access granted.

A digital infobox, so obsequious in in its utilitarian modesty, blinked into being near the center of his HUD. So deceptive in its unassumingly dry message, conveying to Haivel Eposel the sweet, mellifluous words he had been waiting for. Never before had something so prosaic waxed so poetic. The faintest hint of a smile even yanked at the corner of his stolid scowl, his mind meticulously perusing the plethora of option dumped before him as the ship's captain, quartermaster, and bosun all at once. What next? Perhaps a demonstration. The psychological imposition of him reigning sovereign over the seaborne behemoth could prove a valuable tool of attrition. Settling on his choice, he sent his commands to the ship's central system. As if in the stands of a theatre moments before the opening act, every single light illuminating the hangar bay instantly shut off, engulfing Eposel and Medveditsa alike in a viscous, inky blackness.

A few seconds of apprehensive silence elapsed. Medveditsa had frozen in place, her multispectral sensors churning across the scape before her, furiously searching the murk for any sign of her quarry. Little was to be found; Eposel had dropped to the ground with nary a rustle, recalling his drone and sheltering behind a repair trolley, revolvers drawn. A second prompt initialized, a second action undertaken; seconda later, the quiescence was shattered by a dull, uniform roar, the sounds of perhaps a hundred military aircraft waking up from eighty years of hibernation. Control surfce indicators flickered to life, blinking like beats to the melody of a good ten dozen or so hydride ICEs revving up to a cyclic idle. Hissing in livid perplexion, Medveditsa whipped her head around for the source of the perturbations, moments before she turned to face towards the tail of the jet plane beside which she was stood. A tail that bore the gaping exhaust nozzle of a jet engine now gently exhaling a waft of hot air and water vapour. Her eyes had only time enough to widen before that thermal breeze transitioned instantly to a screaming tumult of hydrogen flame.

Blasted clear off her feet, the cybernetic Russian pinwheeled inelegantly through the air, crashing into the broad side of a humming helicopter with a visceral crunch. Thoroughly dizzied by the unexpected assault, she groaned and rolled from the crumpled paneling of the helicopter. Her armor had protected her from the bulk of the propulsive force, mitigating any permanent damage, but hadn't spared her a few tender concussive bruises she was most certainly destined to feel in the morning. The culprit aircraft, meanwhile, had torn itself free of its brake harness and careened into the opposite wall, flattening its nose cone and crumpling its cockpit like a tin can. The jet's hefty powerplant sputtered and popped, turbines grinding to a halt as it whirred to a standstill. A few whiffs of converted hydrogen gas flared in little bursts from the engine's confines, but the majority of the aircraft's fuel, mercifully, remained as a stable hydride. In the momentary commotion, Eposel had taken it upon himself to begin booting up the ship's dormant heart, a bank of hefty DT fusion reactors just now beginning to beat, atria and ventricles pulsating with fusile plasma.

[Blakullar]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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No sooner than Medveditsa derived confidence from her belief that she was about to apprehend Eposel and end this game of cat and mouse once and for all did her enemy's plan come into full effect. Rounding the corner around a parked fighter jet, she readied her chaingun to ventilate her foe...

"Aha-HUH?!" the Two of Clubs yelped when she discovered that Eposel was indeed not hiding behind the fighter as she expected him to be. If there was a cloak, there would be a shimmer; if a hologram, then a-

A hologram. At that stage she realised that she had just made an incredibly stupid mistake in forgetting about the reconnaissance drone that he possessed. Again if he was anything like Dmitriyeva, he would be able to play such devilish tricks of the mind as a holographic projection of himself. Just as she began to kick herself for succumbing to a cheap show like that, the lighting in the room at once shut off, prompting her to adopt full alert. That alert only heightened when each and every single aircraft in the hangar began to start up, the racket reminding Medveditsa of a roaring, bellowing horde of orks about to demolish a town.

Fuck...
The first thought to invade her thoughts as she swapped her sight over to infrared and instigated a frantic scan of the hangar for where Eposel may be. Why she did not do this earlier, she had no idea, but indeed, amidst the growing clusters of red, there he was - scampering along the wall like a spider, a humanoid shape dropping down from the wall. Medveditsa was about to give pursuit when her head snapped around to face the source of a growing scream - an enormous, expanding, whitening thermal signature...

"FUUUUUCCCK!!!"
Blown straight off of her armoured sabatons by the tempestuous blast of a jet engine at full throttle, her scream of shock and fury drowned out by the draconic roar that accompanied the propulsor, Medveditsa tumbled through the air like a leaf blowing in the wind. With an almighty metallic thud, her somersaulting cascade was brought to a crashing halt by her slamming into the side of a helicopter, leaving a sizeable indentation in its armoured flank as gravity peeled her off of the chopper and face-first onto the floor.

Auugghh... Good thing my augments are built for this kind of thing, otherwise I don't think my fall would be the only thing that would have been broken...
That did not change the hard fact that the impact left her with a thundering headache, comparable to the hangover accompanying a twenty-four hour drinking binge. After picking herself up, stumbling to her feet, Medveditsa scanned for where she had seen Eposel jump down to, looking to her right. Grabbing one of the stick grenades hooked to her belt with her claw and arming it with the touch of a button on the bomb unit's side, she opted to introduce an unpleasant, highly-explosive surprise to the growing charlie foxtrot that her foe was cooking at present.

Perhaps if it failed to kill him, she could at least shock him off of his feet. This she considered as she reared her claw back for an overarm throw and lobbed the grenade hard, intent on getting it over the assembled fighters to Eposel's last-known location...

[Vistora]

League of Mechanocracies Proving Grounds

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~ Colonel Haivel Eposel VS Trofima Medveditsa ~

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VMS Egress

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Galvanized by the cacophony of crunching steel, shattering glass, and Slavic profanity radiating from halfway across the hangar's vast, cluttered scape, Eposel steeled his sense and bolted from his cover, soles of his armored greaves clacking across the bituminous black of the asphor pavement. Acutely aware of the presence of so supremely irritated a foe as Medveditsa not far behind him, the elder commando had plotted his most celeritous course as that which took him through the heavy steel portal, currently ajar, of the aircraft bay's lowermost entrance. He was loth to underestimate his opponent's capacity for wrathfully indiscriminate destruction and not entirely keen to remain in its proximity while surrounded by palettes of octogenerian ordnance and converted hydrides nigh upon a century old.

Already, the successful execution of his overarching plan's most recent critical step ad catalyzed his cogitative algorithm to begin churning through the sweeping wealth of options newly presented to him. Assessing his circumstances, the man's machinations began to coalesce around a detailed plan of battle, collating all available information and compiling it into a prioritative checklist. Not until his audio feed began to produce a piercing alert did the reality of his present situation hit him like a freight locomotive.

Beep...beep..beep.beep.beepbeepbeeeeeeep!

Even under the informatve auspices of his TACDAT suite's digital aegis, the internal siren left Haivel scarcely more than moments to react. Medveditsa's grenade, lobbed as an arc just now spiraling within the TACDAT hazard radius, was on a ballistic trajectory prognosticated to blow mere meters from Eposel's right side. That little icon superimposed over his HUD overlay the pinpoint locus of his most immediate, acute concern, Eposel's fire-forged, blood-tempered decisive cognition surged into overdrive, cycling rapidly through his list of plausible options and elimininating them one-by-one, until only the final, prevailing choice balancing efficacy and chance of success remained.

Consequently, he sparked the appropriate neurointegrative connections, relaying from naught but his mind a near-instantaneous command to the minijets mounted on solid gimbals to his hips. Servomotors jolting with electricity spun up the narrow turbines to a respectable several hundred thousand revolutions per minute, and once the compression threshold had been reached, a stream of converted hydrogen was injected into the combustion chamber and ignited with a spark. A pulsating blast seared from the jumpjet nozzles, propulsing Eposel the terminal few meters to the side.

An instant later, the hand grenade detonated, shards of shrapnel swarming his body like a cloud of hornets while the overpressure shockfront wrapped him in its concussive grip and tossed him bodily through the air. He impacted the adjacent hangar wall with the leading side of his left shoulder, tumbling ignominiously across the swath of mercilessly solid steel before spinning to the ground like an ersatz child's top with a thud.

"Ooof! Bloody fucking hell, that's gonna smart come sunrise."

The relevant diagnostics information provided coutesy of his suit's internal life support systems, acknowledged with relief the lack of skeletal fractures or internal hemorrhaging. Nothing that could yet endanger his life. Nevertheless, the dully persistent ache now thumping at the left side of his thorax clued him into the nasty contusions he would surely suffer from what could only be construed as a walloping. For the time being, an injection of local anagesic would hopefully stave off the pain from reaching crippling proportions.

"Eugh, hehe. Can't say this is the first, second, or twentieth time I've been hit with a basher this bad in the middle of a scrap."

True to form, Eposel had already leaped to his feet and resumed his rapid pace towards the exit. The concrete minutiae of his plan of action had begun to set and solidify, one that exploited every advantage his command of the VMS Egress afforded. With his pilfered badge of authority aboard the mighty warship, he had control not just over the doors and the occasional compartmentalized security node, but now of the systemic functions permeating the tremendous vehicle in its entirey; bulkhead blast doors, fire retardation systems, the onboard CCTV surveillance network, and--most critically--the myriad "active security measures" embedded into the vessel's metallic viscera. Consisting of numerous semiautonomous turrets and the occassional heavily armed roller drone, the aforementioned active security measures were designed to deter at all costs a boarding party from gaining any manner of foothold in the ship.

Although Eposel hardly expected Medveditsa, resplendent in her nigh-impermeable armor, to be macerated in the same fashion as the lightly armored raiders the measures were designed to counteract, it mattered little; his war was one of attrition, and dredging her through a good marathon's worth of chambers and corridors laden with suppressing fire was sure to whittle her down. Consequently, he traced his route through the ship's internal labyrinth to reflect this tactic; although, from stern to bow, the mighty battlecarrier was nearly half a kilometer in length, the toruously winding path Eposel had charted out for himself muliplied that length tenfold. Such would take him all the way to the automated magazine recessed into the prow, then loop back onto itself until it terminated at the vehicle depot just below where they currently stood. In the meantime, he couldn't help but take interest in the ship's doppler radar projections. Evidently, a tropical storm was brewing just due west of the ship, psychedelic splotches of false-color radar imaging amassing into a broad, tumultuous vortex. Banishing from his mind the gut-churning notions of being aboard a ship caught amidst a storm, he commanded the Egress to start up its water screws, sailing the ship on a steady path towards the incipient hurricane...