AN: This story is something else to write, more things from various mecha series is supporting my mix of Buffy and Armored Core. It just keeps giving me ideas that fon't fit the story as well. Anyway, this one took a while to write, it happens simultaniously with the last chapter. Though I wish someone had reviewed the last part.
xXx
"Paladin, Reaper here," came the familiar voice, "We have a transport inbound in fifteen, be on the bounce, the area is secure, but your friends are gonna be near you in five."
"Well, I can't ask for everything now can I?"
An alarm filled the frequency.
"Good god," Reaper whispered.
"What?"
"We have intruders, at least one enemy Raven, they're heading for the medical facility!" she responded.
"The medical facility, the only one there is..." Xander whispered, "They're after Faith!"
"I'll direct all security teams there, we need to keep the nest secure!"
"Hurry the evac, Ravens on the first only then the techies and others, we should be ale to reach and trap our foes inside the base."
"Roger, all pilots heading for the retrieval," a gasp followed, "Hawk..."
"What happened?"
"He...he's gone, I got visual, security transferred control to the mission control center, I just saw seven Cores take down Hawk and Titan."
"Damn it, I feel so helpless!" Paladin grunted as he went through his options, "Belay my pickup, I'll be onsite in three minutes!"
"How?"
"Just make sure that the military team realizes I'm not challenging the rules, we need to deal with the rogues, make sure they know my new title in the transmission, it should definitely let them know that I've not gone rogue."
"What?"
"Trust me," Xander said as he held up his core crystal, "Armored Core Desperado, activate, pilot authorization Paladin!"
He flipped through the gear instantly, arming only with the Samurai blades and dumping everything else into power supply, reduced weight and cooling.
"Let's see how fast I can move," he said as worked at one of the panels, flipping a switch that revealed the breaker switches for the safety systems and flipped a pair of them, "Limiter disabled, and lets boost!"
He floored it and powered the overboost, engines flaring into a roar as he rocketed straight for the base with a sixty foot burn behind him.
xXx
Reaper watched as she leaned back, fighting against the urge to rush from the Nests control room. She had been left to the comms array to keep everything going at the school while Paladin, Angel, and three other Ravens played hero to the city.
Now she was stuck in the command station for the duration, the other two remaining Raven's were holding positions to cover the medical unit and the hanger complex. The other troopers, namely two units of marines on 'loan' from the military in exchange for use of the repair facilities their Raven unit needed.
They were outnumbered by at least a dozen to one, and they weren't looking to minimize damage.
Of the Ravens still here other than her, Guardian was working with the Technomancers to bring his Core back online, he'd run one mission in South America two days earlier and wound up with a lot of damage for it, he'd only just gotten healed up enough to walk, meaning that he wouldn't much help in the fight even if his core would be battle capable in time. Faulk was closing in through the air ducts to ambush the enemy.
Her mind was still fixated on the nineteen cores moving against them. Hawk and Titan were dead, their cores vanished on the ground, corpses laying on the ground amidst the faintly glowing Core Crystals and Part Shards.
A glance at the tracking display showed Paladin coming, and her eyes nearly fell out of their sockets as she saw the speed it was registering.
"Paladin," she snapped into the comms array, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Overboost plus limiter release," came the calm response, "Anything new to report?"
"Well, there are only three active Ravens, two already in combat and the third circling to strike our enemies where they least expect it, but we've lost two Hawk and Titan, the transport is in the process of picking up the others," she responded, "And I can't help."
"Open the hatch for me, I'm coming in!"
"Roger," Reaper muttered as she heard a banging noise, "It's open, but I've got a problem, their breaking through the blast doors!"
"Suit up, and get clear, do not risk yourself, we already have two dead," Xander ordered as he touched ground.
She nodded and stepped onto the two foot shaped plates along the wall and hit the activation button, the armor locking around her.
The three yard long smart rifle lowered into her grip as she stood in position behind the desk, the Mark II Power Armor was still in development but had been tested against munitions up to those on battleships. The problem came from smaller weapons though, the armor couldn't hold out long and stay powered, but by god, she would take as many of these jokers down with her as she could.
The helmet's scans counted down the doors integrity as the shields shimmered into existence.
Then the door broke and she pulled the firing stud.
That's when the screams started.
xXx
Xander triggered the Core once more inside the complex, Desperado was still slightly smoking from the heat of the over boost, the cooling systems pumping liquid nitrogen through the boosters and other systems.
He armed his standard mix, ditching the heavy weaponry he had used against the Mayor in exchange for the stealth unit added to his Karasawa and Moonlight.
The energy blade shimmered as it activated, the weapon moving as he joined the fray, blade flashing through the air like a whirlwind, as the laser rifle fired at the lights, the room dropping into an eerie darkness lit only by flashes of energy blade, explosions, sparks of bullets against steel, and laser bursts.
The part of Xanders mind that held fragments of his possession by the hyena ignited within him, the thrill of the fight that drove him. His eyes flashed for a moment as his reflexes triggered in the boosted mode, the magic enhancing the machine he used drawing out his full potential through it.
It was in this mode, the instincts in charge, that had earned him a second callsign, one that terrified many of even the oldest Ravens since the fight he had had with twelve foes at once after the hyena during an incident in Australia.
He was called a short word, only five letters long and told what it meant quite plainly. It was not a curse word, but a noun, but it fit what his foes saw in him when he was like this.
Death.
xXx
Vengeance moved backwards as he saw the new cores symbol blaze for a moment as it shifted, the calm and collected voice of the spirit of the core telling him that a new Raven had entered the combat zone. The tone of voice designed to calm the Raven did not work its magic at this threat though.
He felt cold as four Ravens died in a shower of sparks as the symbol vanished from the HUD as well as his visuals.
"Shit!" he screamed as he backpedaled, seeing the other members of his squad go down to the Raven that seemed like a demon made into one of them.
Fulcrum went down as the core was cleaved cleanly in two, dissolving and returning to its crystal form, the corpse was little more than the limbs, the blade vaporizing the head and most of the torso.
Shade backtracked, all three of the heavy chain guns blazing wildfire, one on each shoulder and a far larger one in a two handed grip though it still seemed to dwarf the mechanical armor.
A single laser blast dropped the female Raven in her tracks as her targeting subsystems went haywire from something that went with the shot. Then her Core was impaled, the blade carving downwards from one shoulder and out the other side.
Vengeance activated the Moonlight he carried and intercepted a strike that came at him. The two blades hovered, both pushing at full strength.
The Raven howled as he pushed as far as he could.
Both weapons were equal, the problem was that Vengeance's AC's arm wasn't that strong and began to squeal in protest as it distorted.
"What the hell are you?" Vengeance roared as the elbow joint of his core gave, the metal fragmenting as the blade fizzed off just before Death's Moonlight ended all thought in his head and the blackness took him in searing pain.
xXx
Xander watched the last of his foes read guard fall as he signaled Faulk as he dropped from the ducts, his symbol fading back to his normal one.
"So, how many do we have left?" he asked as he triggered the recharge for the Karasawa and Stealth units.
"Not quite sure, my sensors picked up a carrier coming out of cloak a mile out three minutes ago, not sure if it's for pickup or delivery."
"Either way, it's not good," Paladin responded, "Pickup means they're on their way out and we've lost a whole lot, delivery means we have more to worry about and the thing is definitely not on our side, a rogue."
"How do you know that?"
"It's not broadcasting an IFF," the black haired one responded as he brought Desperado around to cover the door, "You go and set it up, use the heaviest weapons you've got and set up to take it down, I'll work my way inwards to deal with the rest of these bastards."
"Roger that," Faulk said as he moved off, the massive and heavily armed core making a light grinding noise as its treads moved, "Just don't have to much fun with them, I don't need more screams in my nightmares."
"Will do Matthew," the new Ninebreaker responded.
Emerald markings calculated the energy his Core could access as the Generator hummed in his ear, "I've got only a little damage, one piece of shrapnel managed to cut some of the sound proofing between the internal systems and the cockpit shielding."
A snarl crossed his lips as he moved, the repair circuits coming online as he surveyed his surroundings, his mind knowing that these bastards had much to pay for.
He triggered the door to the launch room and hanger, and it wouldn't open.
xXx
Reaper fired the weapon, the air filling with the screams of her enemies. The heavy weapon she carried clicked empty as she charged. The muscle enhancements of the armor carried her like a freight train into the hallway.
The five thousand pound armor turned three of her foes into a stain on the far wall as she snatched the weapons of two of them and fired them in both directions, tearing through her foes like a raging bull.
In her mind she knew that this was an impossible situation, before the camera had gone dead, she had counted fifty-seven of them with more coming.
The roar of weapons fire filled her ears as pain tore through her and she screamed as the blackness took her.
xXx
An explosion drew Xanders attention and he the digital map of the base as a section of the wall blinked out, the infirmary had been breached, he was too late, it was showing his enemies leaving.
"Boss, they're all gone," Faulk said slowly, "They used the transport, one of them was carrying something when they left the medical wing."