>>61>+——————————————————————————————————————————————–+
>Paris Dead Zone, 2015>4 hours into infiltration mission time
>A small red ball bounces against a wall.
>The boy puts up his hand to catch the ball again, only for the ball to be intercepted by a hand, which then procedes to crush the ball, letting the deflated remains drop to the ground.
>As the boy rolls his eyes at the action, the newcomer, another girl who looks like an exact clone of the first one up to the hair and having compelte legs, walks to the quadruped, taking a step up and looking out over the dead city."Ni, [status report.]"
>The girl on the machine snaps out of her trance, pulling her hand out."[I kicked the hive, looks like there were some jets flying in, sent them after them - not like anyone'll miss them.]"
"Rei [said she wanted us to minimize damage.]"
>The boy speaks up."[To our property], Ichi, [we're not going to get in trouble if some other corp's stuff get's trashed, it's not like Olympus Corp was ever here, right?]"
>The new girl, 'Ichi', turns to face the boy."[I didn't give you permission to speak], San, [and a riled up hive will make it harder for us, they'll be patrolling and. . .]"
>'Ni' jumps down from the machine, landing silently."[We'll be invisible, I've scrubbed us from the databanks, they won't even see us - we'll get in and get the info out like ordered.]"
>'San' gives 'Ichi' a smug smile"[See?] 'Ni' [is well ahead of you.]"
>'Ichi' rolls her eyes."[Curb the attitude, it's bad enough that I have to manage you two already. . .]"
>+——————————————————————————————————————————————–+
>Paris Dead Zone, 2015>The Firefight
>As 'Chakora' plummets to the ground in a spectacular fashion, the rest of Raptor Squadron scramble into action, separating out to avoid hitting each other.
>The fighters are soon joined by a swarm of drones, moving with coordination far beyond what the squadron represented earlier - even with enhanced coordination from being linked up through neural interfaces, the pilots can't hope to match a single controlling intelligence.
>As the drones split out to engage each pilot, the neural link between the pilots begins to work against them, without a proper disconnection, the rest of the pilots can feel the fear of 'Anqa' as she plummets to the Earth, being pulled in by gravity's cold embrace. . .
>>Raptor Squadron, disconnect from the network, flush drivers, and retreat. . .<<
>The order comes in from Wren, and the fighters break off, both physically and mentally.
>Inside of her cockpit, Phoenix sees the pilots disconnecting one by one from the network, and goes to press the button to do so within her own cockpit when a warning flashes up across all screens, telling her of an incoming projectile.
>Grabbing the controls, Phoenix spins her fighter to avoid the attack, but the warning has come too late, and more errors flash up across the screen as the jet is hit, and then everything goes dead.
>With no power, the jet begins plummeting towards the city below as well, heading nose first for a shattered glass pyramid. . .