A/N: Reason for my slight hiatus; I moved.
In those fateful moments, Sheva had yanked the manual lever to open the canopy, unholstered her Auto-Wing and jumped straight out of Rico's opened cockpit and manually lined up the gun with the EMP missile that Sasha had just fired, pulling the trigger in an utterly blinding rage.
Her shot struck the warhead right between the two Titans, both reaching out to grab her as the blast went off, sending her small, airborne form flying in the most unexpected direction... Off the side of the ship.
Rico took the EMP in full, slumping down onto the deck with a thundering crash, completely offline as Sasha laughed in triumph and turned to watch Sheva's distant Boost Pack adjustments to slow her freefall.
"Might want to consider EMP shielding when the big boy comes back online, little Valentine." Sasha flipped her Titan's middle finger off at the command deck before turning to follow after Sheva. "I'll be sure to make it quick... if she even survived the fall."
Sasha jumped overboard with a sadistic laugh before flying away and switching back to the Syndicate comms line. "The brat's on her way down to the jungle, I want all of my support infantry to scour the designated region I've just sent to you. I'll be waiting on the ground at Rally Point Alpha, she is to be found immediately. If she even survived, then I have the claim to finish her off myself. Nobody is to touch her, dead or alive. Is that understood?"
"Dah, Lieutenant. We are on our way to your location now."
"VALENTINE!" Tobias prided himself as a father for never raising his voice at any of his children, but he had to crank the Darkwood intimidation up to eleven just to stop Valentine long enough to look at him. And he luckily succeeded, with his son standing right at the edge of the still opening keel cargo lift. "Koko's confirmed she's alive, don't go alone... please."
It was that moment, one of only a rare handful to ever occur in his whole life, that Tobias felt true fear. As Valentine slowly turned his torso to make eye contact with his father, his solidly glowing white eyes were paired by a deadpan, cold, menacing expression on Valentine's face... and in that moment, Tobias Dimitri Darkwood realized that he wasn't speaking to his son, Valentine Balilaika Darkwood, anymore.
He was staring Death right in the face.
Sheva groaned as she slowly opened her eyes, finding herself in the humid jungle with her back against something solid, already sweating profusely.
Sheva knew instinctively she was already wounded from her less-than-stellar landing through the trees. But she wasn't willing to try moving anything except for her right arm and her eyes until she could determine the extend of her injuries. And right now... she couldn't feel any pain. But she knew she was wounded.
Shit.
"Sheva to Nightfall, come in." Sheva used her DNI instead of wasting her breath talking into her radio. It was online, for sure, although Rico was still rebooting from the EMP and couldn't reply.
"Koko here, you alright, hun?" Koko's voice came through immediately. "C'mon, talk to me, I already have your location, we're prepping bots for a drop to secure you. That bitch clearly wants to finish you off herself when she finds you."
"I can't feel anything below my ribcage, breathing's a bit sharp, but I'm good on that. DNI's fine, T-15 seemed to survive the fall too, but I'm scared to try moving in case I fuck myself up worse than I already am."
"Can you at least try moving your toes for me?" Koko requested, and Sheva did just that, feeling a searing pain in her left leg after attempting it following her initial check of her right. "Fuck! I felt that! Right leg's fine, think I broke my left. Hang on, gonna have a look to see what it's like."
Sheva carefully tilted her head downwards then flipped it back up to open her T-15's mask, freeing her vision to take in the extent of her leg injury.
"Not as bad as I felt, but yeah, I'm not going anywhere fast." Sheva scowled, then noticed her Auto-Wing was laying under her injured leg. "At the very least, I need to grab that."
"Grab what?" Koko asked.
"My gun, my left leg's on top of it. Oh, fuck this is gonna hurt." Sheva gritted her teeth as she grasped her left hand under her knee and lifted it to slide the gun closer with her heel, earning a held-in scream and several large tears in her eyes, but she was quick to grasp her weapon and check it over for damage.
"You alright? Valentine's already stormed off to the hangar deck... and Tobias chased after him, so that doesn't seem good."
"Yup, I knew it'd hurt before I did it." Sheva fought back the tears with willpower alone, then quickly cleared her eyes so she could see properly and concluded that her gun was still functional, so she flicked her head downwards this time and recovered her face with her T-15's mask, bringing up the HUD and assessing the suit's own damages. "I'm sitting against a rocky cliff, I have tree cover for the flying bitch, pretty dense shrubbery around me, so I can at least drag myself out of the open for now. How's Rico?"
"Well, he's flat on his face on the main deck... and even for Valentine's handiwork, this did a serious number on him. I do at least confirm he's still rebooting right now. It's been about six minutes since you blew the bitch's missile up with your gun. By the way..."
"Manually, believe it or not." Sheva already knew Koko's question about her method of attaining such accuracy. "Fucking racist bitch, I just... snapped."
"How about the rest of you? Just your leg hurt?" Koko chose not to pursue the triggering topic.
"Metal arm's gonna need some boyfriend attention, and I want to at least list I might have gotten a concussion on the way down through the trees, my head is killing me."
"You have tech implanted into the back of your head, sweet cheeks. That'd be from the EMP more than an impact." Koko chuckled slightly. "Alright, find somewhere to hide from the flying bitch, I'm pretty sure Valentine's coming personally to find you. I've just sent all of this to Tobias, hopefully that can stave Valentine off the warpath long enough to let someone come with him."
"Is there anything you can do to help Rico faster?" Sheva asked hopefully as she noticed a good spot to hide inside of a nearby fallen tree's hollowed out alcove against the side of the cliff. She began to drag herself on her side, staying low, and refused to move her legs at all, dragging herself with roaring agony in her left leg until she was safely underneath the tree.
"I've done what I can, it's still mostly his internal systems and his Magno Core. I'm surprised his Core didn't shut down completely from that." Koko noted.
"I'm surprised I even survived that damn freefall with only a broken leg and a possible concussion." Sheva commented dryly, then heard a shift in the wildlife sounds around her. "Koko, Val's not here yet is he?"
"No... You've got company." Koko noted that none of the ship's systems indicated that Valentine had even so much as boldly jumped out of the keel cargo lift, let alone launched any aircraft from the hangar. "Big J's good, but I can't pinpoint people through such dense jungle. But... I can look out for her Northstar, I'll keep you posted. Don't die on us, Val might tear the ship in half."
Sheva knew she was hidden, both from above and from a lazy search on the ground, but she still shrank deeper into her hidey-hole as she detected infantry approaching from about thirty degrees to her left. They were speaking in Russian, so she listened in to their chatter.
"Broken tree limbs, up there. Must've landed around here somewhere. Lieutenant, this is Sergant Kamrov, we've found her landing spot, she's not here at all. She's alive, beginning sector sweep."
Sheva was thankful that she hadn't bled when her leg broke, and she'd been in the underbrush long before they got here, so what traces that could possibly be there weren't likely to find right away.
"Look here... Dirt's scraped, looks like a boot imprint, here."
Shit.
"Yeah, and it's going that way..."
Suddenly the three voices fell silent, only the surrounding wildlife could be heard for a moment until approaching footsteps joined the first group.
"Lieutenant's on her way, so this is the landing area for the bitch?"
"It looks like she went somewhere this way." The second of the first group's voices spoke up. "Found a footprint, here, sir."
"Looks like she did it to get herself moving, going backwards... Must have a leg wound. She can't be far. You two, go that way and check for more tracks. The rest of us will stay here for the Lieutenant and search for more traces of the bitch."
Sheva suddenly felt the ground rumbling with heavy thuds... Sasha was coming.
"Sergeant, report." Sasha's voice came through the trees with her Northstar's external speakers, accompanied by the sound of her cockpit unsealing right after she spoke.
"Initial impact zone, ma'am. I sent two men that way after we found a footprint that we believe reveals she is wounded in the leg, and has been dragging herself away through the low plants. Everyone else here has just arrived, including yourself and Unit 4."
"100 meter radius of this point, then we leave before the damn bioweapons send a rescue team to try finding her. We have to get back under the facility before they deploy the Ogre to take on their damn ship." Sasha ordered curtly.
"And yourself, ma'am? Your Titan's rifle is still on their ship, isn't it?"
"I'll be fine. Bring her back with you when you find her, doesn't matter what condition she's in."
"Yes, ma'am."
With that, the sound of Sasha's cockpit resealing reached Sheva's ears and with it the thuds of her Titan walking a short distance away before her jet engines fired up and she flew overhead to possibly oversee the search, leaving Sheva surrounded by her infanty teams that were still searching the foliage for more tracks and signs of her presence.
"Sheva."
Sheva knew right away that Rico was back online, and felt a tear returning to her eyes as she replied in her DNI to him.
"I'm surrounded by at least four teams of infantry, and the bitch is flying around above too. I'm hiding in a broken tree, and I'm stuck with a broken leg right now. How about you?"
"Central core is back online, rerouting power to vital systems to accelerate reboot process." Rico replied, then seemed to clear his throat pointedly. "Personality's back, I'm good. I hate the 'matter-of-fact' version of me. BT can pull it off nicely, I however, cannot. How're you doing on ammo?"
"I'm good, hiding is the better option right now. Not enough bullets for this bullshit, y'know?"
"Well, if it's any comfort to you... Valentine just jumped out of the keel cargo lift and is currently in freefall. He's... Um..."
"Is he alright?" Sheva felt a shiver of concern going up her spine, but then Tobias' voice joined the DNI line.
"You two are the only ones I am saying this to, nobody else is to ever hear this... But that wasn't my son jumping out of the ship just now... I have no idea what's coming for you, and I can't even guarantee your safety either... I'm sorry."