Express flight to Soleanna

[Dulcy]

As Dulcy sees the pod enter the ship without any visible signs of a problem, she breaths a sigh of relief and slowly flys out of the cloud cover to survey the fleet of pods that she and Chadin would soon be working to make a mess of. But in the distance, she saw that something didn't look quite right. She flew closer, and soon blinked and looked back at Chadin with one eye. "Chadin, over there, is that... Tails' plane?" She asks, pointing out with one hand.

[Chadin]

I squinted my eyes in the direction Dulcy nodded towards and just like she said, there it was. "I guess, so... I didn't even know Tails had his own plane. Maybe its an 'alternate zone thing again though. Then again, I only ever was in Knothole once so it's not like I really know everything about you guys."

"What's he doing here anyway? Last time I saw him, he left us at Robotropolis without saying a word. Come to think of it, he wasn't looking too good back there in that elevator either. He was all curled up in a ball like he was freaking out or something. It doesn't matter though. We need to get Robotnik's attention. If Tails is here to help, maybe he'll see what we're doing and join in. If not, then we're on our own after all."

I shrugged, then patted the base of Dulcy's neck encouragingly. "Come on, Dulcy, lets go make a mess of that fleet! Show me what you got!!!"

[Giichi Twinkieland]

((I'll just assume that Falina hides as well to scoot things along. Here in a minute, I'm going to have the ships emerge near Soleanna, so that the other players can join in the fight too.))

Giichi struggled to lift the other swatbot into his own storage compartment. By this time the cleaning bot was almost upon them, so he instead pushed the bot's parts under the control console under the windscreen and dived in after them. With just one bot down there, there should be enough room for both him and Falina to hide under there too.

At this time, the bot reached the windscreen and began spraying washing fluid across the windows. Once that was done, the cleaning rag in its other arm became a white blur as it rapidly and efficiently cleaned the fluid back off. Since the two were hidden, it moved onto other tasks. However, other bots hovered around the ship, still inspecting it for any defects. Occasionally a bot would fly by the window, as it shined a bright red scan ray over the hull.

Giichi didn't like this. How long would it be before the bots finished their check and left? Not to mention, what if they eventually decided to check the inside of the ship? "We've gotta do something..." he whispered. "I bet they'll find out we're in here eventually. I don't wanna do this, but we should attack first while we can surprise them..." The cat thought about all the controls he'd seen. Maybe they could fire one of the ship's weapons to start a commotion?

[Dr. Robotnik]

Robotnik just finished off his bag of powdered donuts and started to reach for another one. He had a whole box of them at his feet. But before he could do that, the doctor received his status updates from his five airships. The report from Egg Ship 5 caught his attention.

EGG SHIP 5 STATUS UPDATE 108-5678

Engine systems optimal
Electrical systems optimal
Port weapon systems optimal
Starboard weapon systems optimal
Bow weapon systems optimal
Stern weapon systems optimal
Ammunition levels optimal
Ground Squads 5A-5D ready for deployment
Ground Squads 5E-5H gearing up
- ready in approx 10 min
Port docking bay units deployed
Starboard docking bay
- Swat Pod ES5-2 in maintenance
- Auto docked
- Previously reported hearing excessive wind noise

The Swat Bots were programmed to auto dock only if they had a severe defect on their ships, like something that would prevent them from engaging in combat. One bot seemed to have reported hearing excessive wind noise from the hatch. That definitely didn't qualify, but it had docked anyway.

The attack was about to begin, so he couldn't spare time to focus on what seemed like a petty issue. He set his computer to automatically alert him if anything else unusual was discovered related to Swat Pod ES5-2.

[Falina]

((I was leaving that open because with Falina's inexperience I wasn't going to have her initiate the hiding, as I figure she wasn't thinking something was going to be coming up and looking into the window. She did however think ahead enough to hide the bots in case the pod was checked while they were out in the ship. However, if Giichi goes to hide, she would follow his lead there, so your assumption works.))

She glances over at Giichi from their hiding spot and nods a bit. "Yeah, if they come inside to do interior maintenance, they will see us right away. Do you really think firing the weapons of the pod is a good idea though? If you can't hit the bots, then that will just alert them that something is going on inside here and make sure they come to spot us right? This is also assuming that you can figure out how to fire the weapons, which, no offense, I think we're as likely to make the pod self destruct as fire any sort of weapon unless you can understand the panel markings better than I. Though, I must say, the only other idea I can come up with is to jump out of the hatch and try to take the bots on personally. If they are just maintenance bots they should be easier to take out than the Swatbots I would think."

[Dulcy]

She nods her head a bit. "The Tails I knew didn't have a plane either, but I do remember that the Tails we ran into back in Robotropolis did have a plane. This whole mixed up world gives me a headache though."

I shrugged, then patted the base of Dulcy's neck encouragingly. "Come on, Dulcy, lets go make a mess of that fleet! Show me what you got!!!"

She smiles warmly and nods back to Chadin. "Alright, hold on Chadin, here we go!!" She calls back as she tucks in her wings and quickly drops out of the cloud, then begins flapping hard to maintain the speed gained by the short dive as she quickly moves toward three pods that were flying in formation. She takes a deep breath as she comes into position over top of the center ship, and breaths out a stream of fire that she directs at each of the ships in turn, aiming to melt the communication antennae on each pod, and fry the connected equipment in the process. She then circles around and aims a stream of ice breath into the engines of the center pod, hoping it would freeze them up and leave the craft falling like a stone. Finally she flew over toward the pod that was on the left side of the formation and aimed to slam her tail at it's engines, expecting that by then Chadin would have already taken out the third pod.

((Hope I didn't do too much in one post, just figured that with the amount of ships, and how we're trying to speed this along, it would be ok.))

[Chadin]

I clung with a death grip onto Dulcy's harness as we dove out of the clouds and into the first of what no doubt would be a very long and furious battle.

As Dulcy builds up wind and begins to breath fire on the lead Swatpod, I turn my upper body around to face the swatpod to our 4 o' clock position and aim one handed at the swatbot that I can see through the windshield piloting the ship. No longer caring about subtly or stealth, I pulled the trigger and let the crimson red bolt of energy sail. Given the awkward shooting position I was firing from, I wasn't going to be surprised if the shot missed or failed to destroy the bot piloting the pod. But like I said, I wasn't trying to be stealthy. I was out to create as big a distraction as possible and create as much chaos and confusion as I possibly could. There would be no chance the bot would fail to see the shot if it missed, and if it didn't it meant one less bot to deal with.

As Dulcy swung around and breathed an icy blast into the engines of another pod, I wasted little time in trying to help ensure we both cause as much damage as possible by firing at the engines themselves with my crossbow.

Two shots expended, and who knows how many targets I'd need to use them on. No question, this was going to be one heck of a fight.

[Tails]

Tails watches on his radar screen and sees detections of shots being fired. This really pumps him up for quite the fight. "Here we go."

He volleys his way from above the clouds to the bottom of the clouds and prepares himself for a plenty of fun. He switches to a targeting device on his machine gun turret. He switches the plane to low and fires a couple rounds of bullets into the jet exhaust of the swatpods in hopes that the flames bursting from the engines would ignite an explosion to cause the machine to shut down.

Tails cheers silently. "Its about to begin. I can't wait."

[Giichi Twinkieland]

Rollling his eyes a bit at Falina mentioning he probably didn't know where the weapons are, he pointed at the triggers on the yoke. "I think those are the guns. That's usually where they are. Anyway, maybe you're right. Let's go out there and take them out right now. I'll go first this time."

Giichi rapidly scaled the ladder to the hatch. Before he popped it open, he removed what looked like a small ball from underneath his cloak. Suddenly, the cat flung the hatch open, and shouted "Bombs away!" as he pitched the ball straight at the nearest maintenance bot on the port side of the ship.

The maintenance bots all immediately looked up from their jobs in confusion, as one of them got stuck with the ball. The small sphere promptly burst into a giant cloud of smoke, sending the entire group of bots into a tizzy as they made high-pitched, whining alarm sounds. The bots on the port side couldn't see at all, although the others on the starboard still could.

Grinning, Giichi dived right into the smoke cloud with his sais at the ready, figuring Falina could take the others. Normally Giichi tried to avoid direct combat, but these maintenance bots looked harmless enough.

As he dropped from his jump, Giichi thrust the points of his sais downwards, straight into the head of the bot he'd stuck the smoke bomb with. He must've hit its CPU, since its alarm slowed down in tone till it warbled into silence. With the first bot done, he whirled around in the smoke to find his next target. It wasn't hard to track them with that really annoying wailing alarm. Thus, he managed to sneak up behind the next one from behind. Once again, two sai points straight to the head and the alarm slowed down till coming to a halt. There had been two bots on his side, so he presumed he was done now.

He waited for Falina to catch up as she fought her own share of the bots.

[Dr. Robotnik]

((Oooooh crap, this is gonna be a doozy to keep track of everyone's actions.))

Dulcy successfully melted the antennae of the two swatpods on the left and center. The one on the right missed. Inside, the swatbot promptly went for his radio. "Alert! Alert! Under attack! Rear guard is under attack! Reinforcements req--"

Chadin's bolt promptly shot the radio in the swatbot's hand to a million itty bitty pieces. He moved to take action, but by this point Tails had caught up and blown holes right through his engines. Smoking, the pod fell like a stone through the clouds below, and out of sight.

In the meantime, the combined assaults of Dulcy's ice breath and Chadin's bolts caused the other two pods to meet similar fates.

---

Robotnik stood up from his chair, as he heard the swatbot's warning. Powdered donuts spilled all down the front of his shirt, spreading the white powder everywhere. "What? We're under attack now?!" He then saw three pods promptly vanish from the radar.

It was then that Tails' plane appeared on radar near where the swatbots were before, now that he'd dived down from the sky above. And now that Dulcy was closer to the fleet, she finally appeared too. She'd gone undetected up to this point due to her smaller signature.

"Get me a view on those two unknown blips!"

Robotnik's screen switched to show a camera view of the middle swatpod in that formation, moments before it was shot down. A dragon briefly swooped into view before circling back around behind the pod, followed up by a familiar biplane that flew in from the front and also went behind the pods. Then static as the combined force of Tails' bullets and Dulcy's ice breath disabled the ship.

"So...the little freedom fighters are back for more," Robotnik growled. "They will not be getting away this time."

Robotnik spoke into a microphone nearby.

"All swatpods towards the back of the fleet, engage the dragon and Tails' bi-plane. Rear gunners on the airships, fire at will if the enemy comes within firing range."

Just then, a second alert came in. "Intruders on board Egg Ship 5! Starboard docking bay!"

Now Robotnik's growl had ramped up to become an outright snarl. "How did they get on the ship?!" Then Robotnik connected the dots, based upon the earlier report. Was that why that pod docked, even though it didn't need any real maintenance yet? Blast...why was everything going wrong today?

"All available swatbots on Egg Ship 5, surround all exits to the starboard docking bay as fast as you can! Do not allow them to escape that area of the ship!"

Unfortunately, most of the forces within Egg Ship 5 were already committed to the guns or the ground assault of Soleanna. They were almost to the city, so Robotnik could not have them leaving their posts right now. If he did that they wouldn't be fully ready for the attack. Not to mention he'd want guns focused on that dragon and Tails too. This was clever on the freedom fighters' part. They were forcing him to split his attention and his forces...

--

In any case, any swatbot committed to routine patrol duty started trooping towards the docking bay, where Falina and Giichi were. If they didn't finish their fight with the bots fast, they'd have to fight swatbots on their way out of the room too.

--

The swatpods towards the back of the battleship formation turned round and started heading back. Swatbots aboard the air ships began rotating their guns to the stern, although Dulcy and Tails were far back enough to be out of range at the moment. It wouldn't be long before Dulcy, Chadin, and Tails found themselves under attack from the new swat pods.