Ch. 16 Rescue in the Ruins

[VirusZero]

Andraia only half watched as the skiff pulled away. She knew which direction they were headed and the borrowed craft wasn't exactly the fastest ship around so she was confident that she'd be able to catch up easily. First though she wanted to finish off the forces that had come out to play.
Perhaps doing so would also cause Neo-Arcadia to think this was little more than an attack on them... that they weren't actually searching for anything.

Though Andraia also just wanted to wreck more of Neo-Arcadia's stuff. These pantheons couldn't exactly be cheap to produce and the more of them she ruined the more this war cost them. So she unleashed another shot from her buster while she spun. Her shot collided with a pantheon and it's red crystal 'eye' was ruined, effectively blinding and destroying the poor machine in one shot. A shot narrowly missed her thanks to her dodge.

She had already thinned their numbers down a fair bit so that only a few rifle ones were left. She lined up a shot and unleashed it, taking out one of the remaining rifle pantheons. But she had gotten careless, she stopped moving to fire her shot. A panetheon got lucky and it's shot struck her in the side. The plasma shot burned into her armour and knocked her off balance. She spun several times before she regained her balance. The pantheon fired again, but it's shots missed because it had neglected to account for target aerial movement resulting from being blasted.

Andraia though had accounted for them as she unleashed several buster shots into the final rifle pantheon. She looked around and all the rifle ones were gone, some of the shield ones were left huddling under their protective barriers. She knew she wouldn't be able to do much against them this way.
Then she looked up and the skiff was almost out of sight. She looked back at the remaining forces... Then decided they weren't worth the time and took off after the skiff.

---

Stark stepped forward, after having been mentioned.
"I do have infrared. So just follow my lead then." He stated.

Inside the ruins the entire place was darkened. They didn't have a lot of light inside (crews hadn't planted many lights). Stark activated his infrared vision and the place lit up red. There were a few small creatures roaming about, but nothing too serious right away.

Though in the distance he could make out a shape of what appeared to be a reploid, it was hunched over though and didn't appear to be carrying a weapon.
"I see a reploid over there" he stated as he pointed.

He approached the reploid slowly, ready to attack in case this was a Neo-Arcadian trick. Though when he got closer he could see that the reploid was one of the Resistance members. He looked badly hurt but was still conscious.
"Elpizo ordered us to search here... Got attacked. I made it back here. It gets pretty dark the further you go. Take my light, you'll need it." He stated. A second later he pulled his hand away from his side, a splash of vital fluid slicked the ground, and handed Stark a portable light stick.

Stark handed it off to someone else though and a second later they clicked it on and the small area was filled with a white glow. Stark tagged the reploid with one of the return devices they had been given earlier and a second later the reploid was whisked away for medical attention and a debriefing, hopefully, in that order.