Chapter 27: Front 15.75 – Casnel – Part 3/3 (Arc 2 – Operation Deadlight – Final Chapter!!)

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Once more Hoki felt the rhyme of the battle change - If at first it had been the slow calculated ambush, than the controlled but frantic time spent revealing the submarine and fighting off the Casnel - Now things deformed into an all out feeding-frenzy.

 She watched in abject horror as Scarlet seemed to rugby tackle the Casnel with her battered red mech.
Watched as she smashed her broken sword's hilt into the enemies visor viciously - Then grabbed its head with the new free hand before firing her flak pods at point blank range - Doing nothing but creating a glimmering cloud of debris.

The Casnel pilot must of been as surprised by this turn of events as Hoki was, for the Casnel could do nothing but flounder around trying to remove Scarlet's grip on it.

 But Scarlet was far from finished, rather than draw one of her remaining weapons - She instead began to punch at the Casnel's cockpit-block with her mech's hand. Every impact would push both their mechs away from each other, only for Scarlet to boost herself back in for another hit, as all the while shards of her mechs fists split off harmlessly.

She moved with a speed that made even her earlier performance look tame, and the movements themselves were ruthless.
 Hoki in all her studies had never come across visual evidence of such a way to fight - Sure you heard rumours from The First War, of combatants who flew into berserker rages and pushed their machines to do feats unthinkable for a human - But now it was right in front of her.

 As the enemy rainfall of energy blasts from the Submarine continued to block her view of the battle (Acting almost like thunderclaps on a stormy winter's eve) - She caught brief glimpse after glimpse of Scarlet's mech moving in disfigured ways - Joints seemed to burst from the strain, hydraulic fluids and oils would flood out into the vacuum from time to time - All as her machine continued to bend and curve and creek and contort and strike out at the clearly disoriented & bemused Casnel.

 And still, even after such a furious onslaught of strike after strike after painful heavy strike - The Casnel looked completely undamaged.

If asked to describe what she saw, to write it into a report once everything was over, Hoki was unsure what she could even say. While it felt like a lifetime ago, she knew it had been bare minutes since Scarlet had stood waiting beside her.
 Reassuring her when her rifle had at first failed, encouraging her not to panic in the face of the Casnel.

Now she looked out, the flak pods from earlier painting her screen like rain drops, the ever-on-coming fire from the submarine like thunder and that singular Red-Eye of Scarlet's mech darting from side to side as though drawing a line of crimson-light across the night's sky - Like some crippled predatory animal desperately lashing out at a hunter twice its size.

Her thrashing red mech, looked so very lonely in that moment.

 'How did this happen? Just a minute ago it was rough but we were doing ok weren't we? What happened to fighting so the next generation don't have to, to working as a team?! What sort of way is that to fight, is she crazy? Does she want to get herself killed!?'

"Scarlet you stubborn bitch, cut it out already!!"
 Hoki yelled into her microphone across every channel.

That outburst of fear and passion was the last thing Hoki remembered with any real clarity.

 In the following moments she watched as while readying another frenzied assault, the Casnel activated that shimmering, green-translucent shield again.

 The green light burned, scorched and sliced through the stocky legs of Scarlet's mech before abruptly the green was gone - Leaving behind it the half amputated remains of what had been the machine's two lower appendages.

 Now little more than a writing mass of cables and sparks.

The next thing Hoki knew there was fire moving in a wholly new direction, moving not at her but towards the white triangle. A moment later she could vaguely still picture it catching a-blaze as the powerful assault ripped through the already damaged hull of the submarine.

More images would flash through her head in a matter of just a few seconds.

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 A line of rifle fire stopping the Casnel from finishing Scarlet off once and for all.

Sabban's mud-brown mech clashing blades with the Casnel. Kolme's double barrel cannon providing support, his voice echoing over the radio telling Hoki to retreat.

The faint feelings of hope and relief when the signatures of three friendly ships, two cruiser class and a mighty battleship flashed upon her radar with the smaller lights of the rest of the fleet's Vijaiks.

 The smell of a slow smouldering flame. That of course had been her rifle.

She wasn't entirely sure how it had gone, adrenaline had been gripping her for so long by then, certainly since she had fired her first shot at the Casnel what felt so long ago - And now she felt so tired, so worn-down from waking in the middle of her sleep, all with an uneasy urge to use the bathroom.
 She didn't remember taking aim at the Casnel, or even how as it retreated - It had clearly deciding not to try and engage with the entire Tristan fleet by itself - And yet out of seemingly pure insanity Scarlet had managed to pursue the retreating enemy in her now single-limbed machine.

Hoki could still picture the bolt leaving her rifle as the much-abused weapon exploded violently even before the beam of light was fully out of the barrel. The burning, glowing and roaring flames as her weapon finally gave up the ghost filling her view screen for a few moments.
 It would strike the first and only real hit any of them would land on the Casnel that day, slicing into its left arm with a visible dent to the presumed invisible machine.

The moments after that she did remember more clearly.

The retreating Casnel, seemingly ready to blast its dogged red-pursuer one final time, turned to face what had finally managed to hit it.
 It rose its cannon in Hoki's direction, never slowing its course back towards its mothership but easily lousing one last shot in her direction.

Almost all her power depleted making that final shot to save Scarlet - Whose mech had now been restrained by Sabban's to stop it from any further insane interventions - Hoki stared into her monitor awaiting what would be, her own monitor's unhelpfully informing her she had used the last of her stored power on the shot that had finally dented the enemy.
 The sickly green line of light from the Casnel closed the distance in seconds, her cabin could never eject fast enough and Hoki wasn't even sure she still had the strength in her arms to pull the heavy mechanism that launched the thing.

'Besides, even if I did successfully eject, my poor old Neo exploding would no doubt certainly catch the pod in its explosion. Heh, I hope someone clouts Scarlet in the ear for whatever the hell just came over her. W-we were doing so well.'

Hoki braced herself, she had seen first-hand what the green cannon hellfire did to the metal platform and the arm of Scarlet's mech - Tearing and gouging through metal with ease - There was no reason to believe it wouldn't do the same to her.

Flash, Crunchhhhhhh.

It was over in seconds, her screen blurred from the luminescent green filling every camera and sensor before clearing once more. The Casnel now disappearing seemingly into thin air, as the blackened and still periodically sparking triangle of space Hoki had exposed began to move away - To retreat now that the Casnel was safely back on board - Its parting shot delivered with nothing but one scorch marks and a few scraps from Scarlet, to even prove the Casnel had ever been in combat that day.

Hoki hadn't even noticed her arrival, she didn't even see the radar blip of her Vijaik's signature. Her eyes had been half-shut expecting the end when it had happened, when the translucent green of the Casnel's final attack was replaced by the familiar emerald of her mech.
 That most basic of Vijaiks, no modifications whatsoever - Its shield raised in-front of it and the machines body itself, a shield for Hoki.

The green energy blast had pulsed straight through the shield and into the torso of the body beneath - The resulting cloud of debris and smoke making it impossible to see just how deep the blast had dug into the Vijaik's core - AF-NV-006

"...U-Una, no, no. No Una what have you done...."

Arc 2 - End - Thanks for Reading.

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