Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Hey, remember how there are anti-air turrets above the PHYRCE building? Also, a bit of GMing, to ensure that everything goes to plan, and we all deploy like we oughta. A couple contradictions, maybe, to earlier posts, but just roll with it so we can get into it.))



Wielder entered the launch sequence quickly, then engaged it. "Gear, we got 150 Seconds to take out that Anti-Air! Head to the lower deck. When I open up the underside doors, you drop out and hit your rockets!" He was, of course, referring to Gear's built-in rockets. They let him zoom about at high-speed, and would be perfect for this situation. "Our drop coordinates are being uploaded to your eyepiece, Rendezvous ASAP."

At this point, the craft was on automatic pilot. It was set to drop the two pods, one carrying the Merc's, and one carrying most of the supplies, into the suburbs. There was a slightly higher concentration of survivors there, and they'd be able to make their way to the building they'd chosen for an HQ with minimal resistance. "Alright, everyone into Pod No. 1! Eyepieces on, that's an order!" Wielder called out. The drop zone had a very low concentration of infected, but there would still be some... "Once we drop, we're in combat! Have your weapons ready! Remember, Headshots! These are not People anymore! They do not think like people, they do not act like people, they are effing zombies! End every one you see!"

40,000 feet below and still a hundred miles out, the dead were waiting to add more to their ranks. Wielder, K', Xeg, Mugen, and Alexei all piled into the pod closest to the ladder down. A timer was on the wall, showing they had just under two minutes until the drop. Each of them sat back in their seats, the specialized memory gel aligning to each of their individual shapes. The Gel was the only thing that would keep their spines uncrunched when they landed. When the gel turned from blue to green, showing it was ready for impact, each mercenary pulled straps over their torsos and prepared for the drop. Time remaining: 90 Seconds.

In the jet behind them, Hyperion squad was launching missiles with gas canisters in them, at the area surrounding the Drop Coordinates. A message came through their eyepieces from Hyperion, to which Wielder replied, "Hyperion, we're dropping in 77 Seconds, follow us 20 after we go!" Gear was waiting outside the Pod with a special apparatus that would allow him to breathe (and survive) in the low atmosphere at 40,000 feet. At 70 seconds, the pod was sealed, and the room depressurized. At 60 seconds, the doors opened up, and Gear jumped out. The pods were still hanging by their drop release hooks.

One minute... 45... 30... 15... "Wielder, the AA has been neutralized! Clear to drop!" 3... 2... 1...

K-KLACK! The release hooks let go of the pods, And the five Mercenaries fell at breakneck speeds... right into hell. 20 seconds later, Hyperion's hooks disengaged. Nine mercenaries were falling to hell, plus one who was blasting his way towards the drop zone. Inside the pods, the ride was surprisingly smooth, until...

BOOM! Click-HISSSSS. The Pods depressurized, the straps were undone, the bodies stood up, and the doors opened.

Each of the Merc's quickly found a target. By the time the second pod had landed, the area had been sanitized. "Get set up! That crash will have caught some serious attention!" Wielder ran back to pod 1, and found the control panel inside one of the seats. He entered a command, and the pod began to shift into the shape of a hover transport. As it did, he moved to make no. 2 do the same, as Nero and Sony did for nos. 3 and 4.

The transport craft all had wide beds, with many places to access storage. The seats had been maneuvered so that they were sunken in and came out through openings in the bed, allowing the Merc's to shoot from a stable platform. Wielder got in the center one of No. 1, the control seat, and gave out the order, "Check your eyepieces, there are survivors around here! find them, ASAP!"

((That was longer than I thought it would be. Please read all of it, so we don't have any contradictions. Thanks in advance, you can all return to controlling your characters now.))

((I'm going to omit the part about the air defense, etc, as it's already been done. I'll dock my ammo 2 magazines accordingly.))

It was a new experience for The Russian - to plummet from the sky to the Earth in free fall. The entirety of the drop, Alexei's eyes were closed; hands firmly locked around his XMD. He felt the unnerving sensation of his insides pulling upwards, like his body was moving ahead of his innards. Then came the intense change of momentum, the deafening blast of their pod striking the ground, and the feeling of his inertia trying to pull him down to the floor.

The Russian opened his eyes at the hissing sound he'd never heard but recognized without question - the opening of their drop pod. As those cold eyes adjusted to the brighter light outside, it was as if he had just landed on another planet.

The city, framed by the yawning portal of the pod's exit, was desolate. The streets were empty, save two infected who limped along in what seemed like a dazed stupor. Stray newspapers, trash bags and debris tumbled lazily along the road. Cars, some scorched, others bashed into one another, dotted the streets.

Alexei didn't pause to take in the image. As soon as the impact gel released his back, The Russian removed his harness and stepped out, into the image of apocalypse. He was the second one out of their pod. It took one second to orient himself while he slung his gun back over his shoulder. The number of infected in the area were minimal. That was subject to change in the next few minutes, as they hardly arrived in silence.

He continued moving forward, away from the pod, as his right hand slid over Matsuhiro's exquisite handle. The katana was in his hands by the time the two infected saw him, and as they loped towards him with vacant eyes and open mouths The Russian was more than prepared.

Matsuhiro jumped from Alexei's right hand to his left, which allowed him to seize the first one that reached him by the face. It slobbered and gnawed at his prosthetic fingers in futility before Alexei brought the creature down, pulverizing its skull into the cement and spilling its decayed brain into the street. It was twitching its last as Alexei whipped Matsuhiro low before him, liberating his second assailant of its legs. He hacked into the creatures neck, unseeming its head from its shoulders.

The Russian's eyes continued looking forward, scouting out hostiles as Wielder's orders sounded behind him. The smooth black font mounted on the side of a large building to the Northwest of the lot where they landed caught his attention.

Goodham-Rutti Corporate Office

The building detailed by Xeg. Their new headquarters.

The Russian pointed towards it, and began to speak.

"We must clear out that building and create barricades. The survivors inside are still alive!"

He wasted no time, and began his swift approach. Matsuhiro's blade amputated the arm, and then head, of another infected. The doors to the building itself appeared to have been barricaded recently, but signs of destruction showed that those barriers had failed. The were broken down and the doors had been pushed open from the outside.

With a few keystrokes on the command console of pod no.1, the four vehicle-pods began to circle up, and emitted a shield around them all. A few more keystrokes, and the shield turned from blue and clear, to red and hazy. The difference was that now, instead of relfecting all matter, it only reflected the presence of the Serum. Meaning, the Zombies couldn't penetrate it. However, if it got overwhelmed, it would go down quickly. These facts were relayed to all the eyepieces.

After it was set, Wielder shouted, "SOMEONE BACK MUGEN UP! I WANT NERO TO JOIN ALEX AND I CLEARING THE HQ! EVERYONE ELSE, PAIR UP, FIND SURVIVORS AND BRING THEM HERE! MOVE!"

Wielder dashed, and then fire-jet-boosted to the building entrance. His eyepiece tallied seventeen infected in the building, most of them surrounding a barricade at the top of the stairs leading to the top floor. It was the last thing that looked like a barricade there. He wasted no time moving in. At the entrance, he summoned his Tsukikage-tana, a pale blue, ten-man blade that burnt whatever it touched, other than Wielder. It was his strongest blade, by far.

Using his fire jets to move, he decapitated one foe on the first floor on his way to the stairwell. He was in luck- there was an open space in the middle of the many floors of stairs. He could hear the groans of the monstrosities assaulting the barricade. Fire blasted out of his feet, and he rose at high speed.

((Edit: Line at the DMV))

Damian gazed at Mugen, admittedly jealous of the other's ability to ignore gravity and make the leaps to tops of buildings. His eye quickly overlaid a map of the neighborhood and tried to plot the fast route through the mass of undead. Unfortunately, it was a rather circuitious route avoiding the worst concentrations.

Damian activated his radio," Mugen, I can make it in fifteen minutes following a safer route or a minute and a half if I can cut through the z-crowds. Request that you follow along the roof tops and provide range cover while I attack directly through the horde."

Damian proceeded to run headlong toward the masses. With his predicative software, he was fully capable of engaging up to nine targets simultaneous with his deadliest weapons. He was currently weilding his sword, as the breakneck pace would make aiming simply too difficult with his SMG.
His blade went snicker-snack and left a zombie dead. Another died to the sharp end of a back limb. Snapping jaws and rending claws reached out to kill him, only to be separated from their bodies. Although the zombies were unlikely to kill Damian, they could certainly start to slow him down with sheer numbers.

(looks like 'Reserved' pose orders flown out the window again, Xeg stare )

Cushioned not only by the gel in the pod, but by all the inertial dampeners and inertial transference of her ultra-tech armor, Alida soon enough erupted forth from her means of conveyance to the surface, along with 3 other mercs, looking all about.

And now, the grey-encased woman checks out her fellows, then glancing towards the visual readouts projected upon the inside of her helmet's visor, barking out to the others, "Meet up with yer assigned group, get down ta business, folks!"

Soon enough, her own shitkicker footgear leads the 'retired' Marine to the nearest of her own assigned group, Damian found along her way after the blonde encountered one rogue zombie, putting the thing out of all their miseries with a well placed head shot.

Noting via keen sensors the current battle with nine targets Doomshot is engaged in, the White Wolf simply observes for a moment, then lifting her gauss rifle up, targeting in on the zombie farthest out of his area with a sniper's precision. Set to manual, the sweet squeeze of trigger produces a 'pop' or report around the compound, followed by the partial explosion of the once-person's head in a small splatter of gore.

Gear
Technopath, Inventor, Strategist

((Sorry guys, I'll catch up the best that I can.))

Gear nodded once the jet was on autopilot, though he wasn't sure he agreed. The jet had state-of-the-art weaponry and great mobility, but Wielder saw fit not to use it, so who was he to argue? Other than their tactician, anyway, but that was beside the point. Gear rocketed out of the jet, flying at breakneck speed down towards the massive pile of rotting flesh on the ground.

The anti-air canons were firing nonstop, and Gear's diamond laser pistols were perfectly on target. One, two, three, four.... each second, another was destroyed. With most of the defenses gone, Gear returned to dropping altitude to meet up with the rest of the League.

The half of Gear's brain that was computer analyzed the situation quickly and determined what course of action to take. The half that was still human caused him to freeze in horror, as nothing could have prepared him for what he was seeing. Thinking that those were people at one point. A child, a mother, a father...

No time for that! He scolded himself mentally before returning to the task at hand. Liquid nitrogen bombs flew from his hands in all directions, freezing the zombies. His electrified staff did the rest, separating rotted necks from decaying heads. He scanned for survivors as he did, but didn't detect any in his area. "Gear to Wielder, I no survivors in my quadrant. Engaging the enemy presently." He also sent a cyberpathic signal to the jet to retreat so it wouldn't take any additional damage flying without a pilot.