The Spartans held close their weapons and were much quieter, in comparison to the Marines. Team Reaper was somewhat frighteningly so, specifically. Sat face to face with the Lieutenant, the team's commander, Adora felt uneasy about him. About all of them. Even the bird they rode in on was something entirely different from the standard UNSC stuff. The Lieutenant and his men felt... Wrong. Like they had more blood on their hands than most of the UNSC they'd met so far, which, granted, wasn't many, but...
Reaper Actual. That's what they called him all the time on the radio-communication system of the aircraft. Never a real name or anything of the sorts.
"Hey, Adora." Glimmer whispered
"Yeah?" The blonde raised a brow
"Don't they feel a bit too... Robotic?" The Princess of Bright Moon pointed at the Spartans. Adora nodded absentmindedly. She watched the Spartans again with a more muted awe, as did the others. Bow himself seemed quite ecstatic to find out more about them. At the same time, rightnow, he was sitting quietly and probably contemplating the fact that they were staring at people who've fought for longer than they've been around.
Well, some of them. She didn't know, nor did she wanna assume the age of the Spartans, seeing as she has yet to see under the helmets. Frosta, meanwhile, seemed her ever-ecstatic self, sat right by Glimmer as always. Mermist and Perfuma were idle, neither saying a thing as they waited for the moment of landing to arrive. Mermista, for a fact, seemed more scared than anything, her somewhat darker complexion now taking a turn for the pale.
Adora leaned toward Mermista, then asked "Are you alright?"
The woman twitched, then looked to Adora and said through gritted teeth "Absolutely fine... For now..."
"Afraid of flying, I would assume." One of the Spartans stated rather bluntly, taking the girls' attention toward her. She sounded about the Lieutenant's age, but they couldn't really tell. Armor made it hard for them to figure it out. And despite Mermista wanting to protest, the girl continued "It's normal. It is only your second time flying, your highness. I was merely proposing the fact to miss Adora."
"Well, thank you, soldier girl." Mermista shot back with annoyance and rolled her eyes. She then admitted "It's not particularly easy flying when I'm meant to be the water elemental princess, alright?" throwing her arms up in the air... Before they landed back on her chair and her grip tightened when the bird decelerated. It veered to the right as beams of energy shot up into the sky, before swinging in for landing.
The pilot, another Spartan, poked his head from the cockpit and said "We've been engaged. Times ten bots below. Possibly more on the way."
"Bring us in." The Lieutenant said, standing up and drawing his weapon. He looked to the Princesses, whom all stood up, with Mermista seemingly most excited to be off the aircraft as she took point next to Adora. The Spartan nodded to the blonde and the swimmer, before watching as the rear ramp of the vehicle opened. He racked the rifle's bolt, then said to the girls "We'll see you on the ground." before he and his team of five surged forward, jumping out of the aircraft.
Adora gasped, running to the edge of the ramp and watching as the Lieutenant fell, his life chattering, aimed at a bot. A dozen bullets tore through armor plating and through the eyepiece, before the first Spartan landed like a warhammer on top of one of the bots, squashing it under their armored heel. The others hit the dirt just as fast and the echo of gunfire permeated the woods.
Adora looked to Mermista and the others, then she smirked. Drawing her sword, the girl yelled "For the Honor of Grayskull!"
On the ground, the Lieutenant and his team had established a nice perimeter for the Pelican to land in. While their pilot brought the bird down, a single figure jumped from it, kicking up dust as she landed. Clad in a militaristic-looking outfit, with a strange tiara, long blonde hair, heavy boots and golden vambraces. She also wielded a surprisingly large, ornate sword.
Soon, the Lieutenant recognized her. He paused, turning to face the woman that, up until a few moments ago, had been a head shorter than them, standing at his height. She flashed a grin at him, while he looked on, confused. He didn't get to ask any questions, however, as a beam of energy struck his shields, draining a decent bit of them and slightly charring the armor.
The Spartan raised his rifle, shouldering it and firing. The rounds struck and penetrated armor, but before he could fire more, he saw Adora, presumably She-Ra now, surging forth and raising her sword. One slash down and the robot split in half like a cracked egg. She looked back, a grin on her face, while the Lieutenant and his Spartans rallied around her. He nodded to her, then said "I presume this would be you as She-Ra."
"You presume correctly." The girl tried to sound pompous, but almost embarrassed herself in pronunciation.
The Lieutenant thanked Adora silently, before grabbing her by the shoulder, pulling her back and drawing his sidearm. Two .50 SAPHE bullets punched through the optical sensors of the machine and it tumbled back into its comrades, before exploding in a shower of shrapnel and robo-bits. He slid the pistol onto his thigh's mag-lock, then said "Eyes open then, She-Ra."
"Heh." Glimmer teleported beside them, ramming the staff she now wielded into the eye of another bot.
Adora chuckled, before readying her sword. A literal wave washed two more bots away, while ice daggers pierced a third and colorful vines wrapped a fourth and a fifth and bound them together. An arrow followed, piercing through the eye of a sixth. The Spartan, Adora and Glimmer turned to the Princesses, with Mermista wearing a grin on her face as she was finally up to
Following up, one of the Spartans pulled out a weapon with a rotating cylinder as its magazine. They shouldered it and let loose six high-caliber grenades from the weapon. The grenades themselves exploded in a flash, burning the electronics of the machines that arrived to reinforce their brothers. Almost a whole platoon of the damn things, in fact. The grenades had perfectly spread out among them.
"Good shooting, Five." Reaper Actual voiced, before looking to the others as they fought. The team took pause, seeing a third squadron of bots approaching and the Lieutenant and Adora exchanged a look, before both turned to the mechs and raised their weapons. With a giggle from Adora and Glimmer and the thunder of guns, the team rushed in, while, above, the Pelican of team Reaper brought the roarin', rippin' and tearin' of its 30mm gatling cannon.
The Fright Zone
Catra had found a moment of peace in the mess of commanding an entire war of conquest. Sat in the mess hall of the Fright Zone's Force Captain barracks, the young catwoman read a report file on other possible First Ones tech sites for their newly-acquired bud, the Princess Entrapta, to work her magic on. She remembered the one where she and Adora had been. The whole debacle. A shiver ran up her spine as she remembered the robot spiders that acted as the place's security system.
God, she hated that place. She hated those memories it brought up. She hated dealing with First Ones tech and, by the Horde, she really hated working with a Princess in her retinue, but Entrapta was something else. Not like the other princesses, far too easy to manipulate, yet smart and sharp as Catra's own claws when it came to techno-geek stuff. She sighed, shaking off the memories and the feeling of crawling in her skin, before turning back to reading repots.
Until the door was almost busted open and her XO's voice called "Catra! Catra, oh, you're not gonna believe this!" in the most weird tone she'd heard to date. Turning to face the six-foot five mass of muscle, chitin and woman that was Scorpia, Catra only laid eyes upon her fear-filled expression. Standing to her feet, the Force Captain and(de facto) supreme commander of the Horde's forces while Hordak busied himself with his toys raised a brow at her subordinate.
"What is it, Scorpia? I'm kinda busy right now." She said, almost disregarding the look of fear on her face before it came back to her "Something wrong?"
Scorpia rapidly nodded, before grabbing Catra by the arm and dragging her over toward Entrapta's laboratory. Catra didn't even oppose it, curious as to what the hell had gotten into Scorpia that she was this afraid. She hadn't even been this scared when they went up against that spider in the toilet. Ironic arachnophobia, considering what Scorpia really was...
And then, entering the mess of a lab that housed their tech geek turncoat, Catra's heart stopped. She noticed that the usually bubbly Entrapta was now sat in her couch, legs crossed and staring with a combination of abject horror and utter infatuation at the screens linked to their combat bots' visual sensors. Pulling her to the screen that the Princess was so focused on, Scorpia jabbed a claw in its direction, unable to even voice what was wrong.
Catra slowly turned her head, to be met by the sight of a freeze-frame image presenting...
... What the hell?
"Entrapta. What am I looking at?!" Catra demanded, eyes locked on the screen. A tall figure clad in the heaviest armor the Force Captain had seen to date stared stared down the 'bot that had been filming this, its(Catra wasn't sure what they were, male, female or some kind of machine) strange weapon pointed right at the machine. Behind it was Adora in her She-Ra form, slashing down a bot, while behind and around them, more of the same armored soldiers and the Princesses fought the fourth and fifth Platoons Catra had sent in. High above, a strange, dark ship hovered menacingly, the weapon mounted in its nose spewing fire.
"I don't know..." The girl said, jotting down details she could notice about the armor "For the first time in my life, I don't know what I'm looking at."
"They look human, right?" Scorpia seemed to plead "I mean... Those can only be humans in armors like that."
Catra squinted at the robo-humanoids, then murmured "What have you done this time, Adora?" before she turned to Entrapta and said "See if you can't get a bot farther away, give us a sight picture of what these guys with the Princesses. are capable of. And tell me any theories while you're at it."
"Right..." Entrapta quickly did as asked with one of the bots, before she turned to meet Catra's gaze. She spun the touch-pad tablet around and showed Catra calculus, before starting "Theories about them... Well, while I was busy re-arming another unit of bots to send into the Whispering Woods, as you asked, I caught something on the Fright Zone's external scanners, that I connected my computer to. It was somewhat faint, but it came from above."
"What, like the sky?" Catra raised a brow.
Entrapta shook her head, then pointed farther up. And Catra still looked confused... Then, she realized "No, no, no, that's not possible. There's nothing out there, not even Stars. You can't expect me to believe that something is up there now."
"Well..." Entrapta chuckled awkwardly, before bringing up the next panel, which showed a redirected sensor dish from the Fright Zone's com and scanning center. And a massive red blob in high orbit. The tech-geek said "I... Kinda found this as well when I went poking. Something big is above us and... I'm really thinking that these guys, whatever they are, tech-wise, came from there."
... Oh, great. This was the LAST thing Catra needed today. She sighed with dismay, then spoke "I seriously hope you're wrong about this, but we won't know 'till we find out more about Adora's new play-pals."
"I'd love to study one!" Entrapta seemed to go from spooked to ecstatic in but a second... Before falling back into spooked as she said "If we can even capture them. Oh, Robot's in position!"
Catra and Scorpia joined Entrapta on the couch and looked at the screen.
Barging forth as if it was a battering ram, the tall armored figure and its fellow compatriot giants burst through another line of bots, before utilizing their weapons. Weapons that literally spewed fire in the form of sharp projectiles at the bots. The rounds cut through the bots' thin armor like a hot knife through butter (or so Catra thought the expression went).
One of the other figures raised a heavy, two-barrel weapon, turning it toward a group of five bots that charged them. It squeezed the trigger and a single missile escaped the front, leaving a smoke trail through the air before it slammed into the leading bot, bursting it from the inside out and shattering its comrades. Entrapta seemed to cower behind her knees, still writing out data on the pad and on a clipboard. Scorpia, though, was actually staring with abject horror at the mobile war machines.
A third armored figure appeared, this one clad in even heavier armor. It charged a bot, rammed right into it, hoisted it up and threw it into a squad. It threw one punch right through the eye module and tore out its laser cannon. It then drew its heaviest weapon off its back. It looked like it was meant to be mounted on some kind of support. It signaled to Adora and the Bright Moon princess to charge forward, before raising the cannon and squeezing the trigger.
Rounds cut down a wave of robots that had redirected their course to engage the new group. Adora's blade sheared another one in half, while Sparkles teleported one of the bots into the sky, tossing it to the floor. Two arrows flew in above the heavy gunner and exploded with sticky, glue-like materiel, pinning down the bots. Following that, a wave of water that soon turned to ice washed the bots, followed by three grenades that shattered the ice and the machines.
Catra gritted her teeth, then ordered "Order the bots to retreat and regroup. We can't risk losing all of them out there... Something's off about those troopers..."
"They're terrifying..." Entrapta said, yet again in mixed admiration and horror. She nodded to Catra after she shot a glare her way, quickly moving to the tablet to begin ordering the machines into a tactical retreat. The flying machine above clearly gave no shits about the retreat order, though, as it hosed down the mechs with heavy gunfire. Catra clenched her fists, feeling her heart beat out of her chest out of both anger and worry.
... No, this was a one-off. No way in hell there was anything out there capable of fielding these bots. Adora couldn't have hired them either...
It was not First Ones tech. Catra knew that much. Too rugged and not flashy.
Whatever they were, they were gonna go down like the rest of the Rebellion. She'd make sure of that. She looked to Scorpia, then said "C'mon. We've got some paperwork to deal with."
"... Right with ya." The girl nodded, marching slowly behind her. She looked to Entrapta, who seemed to still be gathering Data, then she sighed. If anyone was gonna figure out new tech by just looking at it, it had to be Entrapta. She was one of the smartest people that the girl had met(Not smarter than Catra, though, the girl reminded herself), so she'd be just fine. They'd be fine.
... Right?
Bright Moon
"Easy company is awaiting assignment aboard the UNSC Sheridan. Fifth's also asking when the Firebases are gonna be online, while the sixty-third ODSTs wants to go boots-on-the-ground already." The Captain murmured to herself as she did a head count of the next wave of arriving assets whilst writing down the data on a tablet. UNSC standard, of course, none of those tracker pads from Bright Moon. Not yet, at least.
She was stuck in the spare room for the time being, waiting for Angela to finish giving a tour to the Sergeant and his team. Apparently, she wanted a team of theirs around for the sake of security. Bright Moon had been the site of a battle almost a month ago, apparently, so there was no surprise with the Queen seeking defenses from them, being their new allies and whatnot. The place was filled with fucking cushions.
Her mind wandered every so often to Earth, to how bad things must've been. She wondered to herself just how harsh the universe could be, where their First Contact with an alien species was literally the cause of their imminent demise. It was a pain in the ass. Honestly, she wished she'd wake up back in her bed, either at the Academy or at Home. No Covvies, no nothing...
She heard the door prop open, then said "Ah, Queen Angela. Hope the Sergeant wasn't too much of a bother."
And she jumped as she heard his voice "Well, I don't know if I was. Haven't asked her."
She turned around, to see the Marine. He'd ditched his armor, leaving himself only in his dirty forest camo BDUs and with a dumb grin on his face. In his hands, he held two cups of steaming hot coffee. The Captain grinned back as the man approached the over-decorated desk and set the cup in his left hand down beside her, before leaning himself on the desk.
"So." The woman took the cup and sipped, feeling a shiver run up her spine as she felt the familiar taste. "This is Arcadian coffee."
"Only the best beans out there." Smirked the Sergeant "I keep a bag stowed away in my bag for times where MRE Insta-Coffee just doesn't cut it."
"This one of them?" The woman raised a brow.
"Figured a little celebration was in order for all that's been going on, miss Diplomat." He quipped "How's the force assignment going?"
"Well, you found us a nice landing spot a bit farther in the north and the first bits of the Firebase should be arriving pretty soon." The woman noted, arranging her holster after feeling it poke her hip. She hummed, then said "The Admiral's thinking about tossing all of Gamma down here for us, plus about two more Marine companies and at least a regiment of tanks."
"Heh. Gonna be fun, seeing these Horde fuckers when our tanks roll over them." The Sergeant took a long swig from his coffee. Valerie chuckled
She asked "Doesn't that burn your throat?"
He pulled the cup away, then breathed out and said "It's cooled a bit... So no. You alright, Val?"
He must've seen her struggling to stay awake. To be fair, it had barely been a day. She saw the sun slowly setting over the horizon and wondered to herself just how long had passed since the Spartans had been away with the Princesses. She sighed, then nodded "I'll be fine. Probably just need to fall asleep a bit after all is set down here. I've still got to take the Princesses and the queen up to the Eternity." And she rubbed her eyes "God, it's barely been a day..."
"It'll get easier." The Sergeant said.
"How do you know?"
"... I don't. I can only hope it does." He hummed, then he stood up "Because I don't wanna live the rest of my life thinking we fucked up somewhere."
She looked to him again, her eyes filled with sympathy and sadness. Softly, she said "If there's anyone here that's fucked up, it's probably me... For not wanting to stay around and fight. I dragged us into another wholesale war, too... I was fucking stupid, really."
"Hey. C'mon, Val, I was just saying. You aren't stupid, you just did what you thought was right." He sighed, then he looked over to see a very fluffy bed. He chuckled, then said "I'll let you take a nap. I still have to rally up my team before Hsu gets into whatever stock of alcohol Bright Moon has. Seriously, that woman needs to go see the Fleet Shrink soon." before he bid the woman a goodbye and left the room.
She sighed, before downing the coffee in three swigs. She set the cup aside, stood up and walked toward the bed, ignoring her work for the time being. She took off her uniform jacket, tossed it aside and fell face-first into the overly-comfortable bed. Before any part of her brain that said she needed the work could protest, the woman had fallen into a deep sleep.
One day of insanity. It would drain anyone. Especially with so many people's fates in their hands.