When Tobias walked out onto the main deck and walked right to the bow, Sheva knew right away that there was a reason he was carrying his guitar in one hand and some sort of large broadcasting module. Even Rico was suspicious about Tobias' intentions. Was he going to play a song to taunt the Syndicate?
"Rico, you have the files from the Raccoon and Carrier Incidents... right?" Sheva asked warily.
"He did indeed utilize music in both Incidents, yes. And several recent records also indicate that he uses music to motivate new recruits, as well as to intimidate hostiles in open battle." Rico replied, still watching the approaching helicopter formation.
"Alright, Val, full halt before we're in their killbox!" Tobias suddenly spoke up over the radio, and the ship slowed to a halt, staying stationary with the retro thrusters all over the keel of the ship. "Koko, I'm ready for the switch. Just say when."
"Hijacking their comms, employing encryptions and cranking their volume... Now."
With that, Tobias laughed in a very dark, menacing tone as he suddenly started to play the guitar, since it was already connected to the module in the first place. It took a moment for everyone to realize that it was This Is My War by Five Finger Death Punch... Tobias' longtime favourite song.
And then Rico assisted by adding the rest of the song's instruments to the hijacked feed while Tobias started to sing the song with perfect timing.
Halfway through the song, Rico suddenly sealed his cockpit and armour plating around Sheva as he detected the Syndicate ships mobilizing towards them, and the distant sound of the helicopters reached her ears just before he covered her inside.
"Toby knows. He's taunting them out of their ambush and to try and usurp their morale with the song." Rico already knew Sheva had a flash of worry for Tobias standing out in the open at the very front of the Nightfall, but he calmed her down as he readied the Tac-3 at the incoming choppers. "They've already broken their formation, prepare for combat."
"Without their detection systems functioning, they're struggling to even safely break their formation." Koko reported with a low laugh. "So the chances of them even detecting the Maidens is nearly zero, let along getting a lock onto us in the first place. So any incoming fire will be manually aimed."
"Good call. Shall we send them a courtesy greeting?" Rico suggested as he locked his targeting system onto the foremost chopper and aimed the Tac-3 at it.
"All hands, fire at will!" Valentine ordered as he engaged the ship's forward propulsion and banked towards the fleet that was just now beginning to appear below the clouds. "Be prepared for evasive maneuvering and close-range fire."
"You drive, Rico. I've got a little something something of my own for them too." Sheva grinned behind her T-15's mask as she brought up a dedicated display for the HUD and began preparing her idea.
"With pleasure." Rico chuckled as he fired first out of all the ship's weapons systems, the Tac-3's distinctly sharp thump-like reports with their slow fire rate immediately gave away that Valentine had based the design on Tone's 40mm Tracker Cannon from Titanfall.
With a smile at the familiar weapon, Tobias encased his guitar in a layer of ice on the deck, then spoke into the radio earpiece he was using. "Now that I have their attention, I'm going to abuse that attention. So don't mind me, I want to send them a message."
"You already have, Dad!" Both Yuuki and Rachael countered, speaking at the same time as Tobias chuckled in reply.
"That was just to get their attention. The real message is much more intimidating." He replied before suddenly launching straight upwards from the ship with his Telekinesis and turned towards the first of the thirteen ships, then shot forward at such a high velocity that Sheva felt the shudder of him breaking the sound barrier from inside of Rico, but didn't hear the distinctive sound. She did however, catch a glimpse of the shockwave that appeared around him when he did it.
"DAD!? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!" Yuuki screamed into her mic as she watched Tobias streaking across the sky like that.
"This." Was his only reply before a big blue flash of cryo-fire engulfed him without stopping his high velocity flight towards the ship, and both Valentine and Rico brought the sight up onto their main displays as they saw a massive shadow forming in the middle of the growing ball of cryo-fire...
His white dragon Kakuja.
"Toby, comms check. You good?" Alice spoke up with one hand pressing her earpiece a bit further into her left ear.
"Yeah, I'm fine. How's the outgoing quality?" Tobias' voice came back through the radio without any interference.
"Just checking, since you just popped your Kakuja and all." Alice replied as she watched the helicopters scattering to get away from him as he flew towards their ranks.
"So what's the game plan? We're a bit of a clusterfuck right now, in all honesty..." Yuuki asked as she directed the weapons systems to not shoot at Toby, despite the blaring alarm that was detecting his T-Virus.
"The railguns are set for Rachael to target the ships, Rico and Dad are handling the choppers, and the keel guns are keeping our lower hemisphere clear until we've confirmed the location of the Ogre. Oh, and you've already set Dad as a friendly entity, I see. So for now let's just shoot the fuckers down so that Dad and Rico aren't hogging all of the glory!" Val explained while he piloted the ship so that Rico and Sheva wouldn't be thrown overboard during evasive movements.
"I can work with that!" Yuuki declared as she set to work manning the weapons systems.
With an audible whine, the railguns began charging to full power, their chambers already loaded with cans of Mountain Dew as Rachael lined up their targeting systems with the closest of the Syndicate ships, looking just like the Nightfall save for the lack of railguns and a noticeably differently shaped bow.
"Where am I targeting, Val?" Rachael asked as she scanned the hull in her display.
"Aim for their starboard bow thruster vents, if they can't turn away from us, then they're going to be forced to do a full circle to get away, and doing that would open you up to their entire flank." Val's instructions added a highlighted overlay to her display, marking the rather important vents that made the ships turn.
"What about ours? Can they hit us at this range?" Stella asked, since she was in charge of monitoring any damage to the ship, and had a full live-time holographic render of the Nightfall in front of her.
"Not with those 315mm's. They'd need to be about two more kilometers closer to us to pull off that precise of a shot. I redesigned the vents after they were installed for this exact purpose." Valentine replied. "Hey, Rico, what're your current accuracy margins with your Tac-3?"
"I am using the airburst ammunition, providing covering fire rather than precision attacks. But, to answer the question, my chances of a successful impact are 14.3% per shot." Rico replied. "Toby's also in my way, otherwise my chances would be 26.1% per shot."
"You're just mad that I'm already in the fight, big guy." Tobias chuckled as he breathed a barrage of icy projectiles into the nearest helicopter as it tried to fly away from the sheer size of his draconic Kakuja. The icicles impaled through the hull with ease, causing it to shudder and rock to the side from the staggered impacts before several shattered into the rotorblades and caused the helicopter to lurch sideways into a downward deathspin, spewing heavy black smoke from the crippled engine as it plummeted to the jungle landscape below.
"No, you and your big ass are in my way." Rico replied with a chuckle as he landed a direct impact through another helicopter's entire cockpit, which caused the 140mm round to detonate right between the two pilots, tearing apart the entire front end of the helicopter in a flash of smoke and fire, causing it to also plummet to the ground with very small chances for the Syndicate personnel aboard to survive. "Target eliminated, eleven more in sector."
"Rico, do you have the flak rounds?" Sheva asked, still working on her idea, so she wasn't watching the combat taking place in front of her on the displays.
"No, only the airburst ammunition. Shall I set some of the support crewbots to prepare a loadout of the flak ammunition?"
"What's the flak rounds configuration?"
"Timer fuse for high altitude scattering of the shrapnel, with a distinctive green flash during the detonation. It's designed to rain the shrapnel down onto targets from above, much like a flechette round."
Mao snickered at the commentary about flechette rounds, and Koko resisted the urge to smile as well.
"I only need one round, have a crewbot set one up for you and bring it to you while I finish up with these last few adjustments." Sheva replied, still doing the fine-tuning for what she was planning to do.
"Only one?" Rico seemed suspicious, yet likewise curiously amused at the same time. "Orders received, a crewbot is being mobilized to my armoury now."
"Trust me, this is gonna be sweet." Sheva replied, still not watching Rico take down another chopper with another direct impact from an airburst round, tearing off the rotorblades and cause the chopper to fall straight downwards. Not even gliding forward slightly... It just dropped like a stone.
"Now you're just getting my hopes up." Rico chuckled, dropping the empty rack for the Tac-3's ammunition onto the deck as he retrieved his second of three loaded racks of the airburst rounds, then chambered the first round to resume firing.
Koko glanced over to a sudden message coming from Sheva's DNI in her station for controlling Jormungand. Her eyes widened slightly in surprise, but then she grinned and gave Sheva the last few tidbits that she needed for her idea.