Angel Island Beach

[Tatsuhiro]

And Gail was right. Just as he was about to get to the line, he heard the gunshots before he felt a pain shoot through him. He would tumble to the ground, snarling in anger and pain. He tried to move his right leg, but with the bullet behind his knee it crippled him. But he was now on the ground and not nearly as big as a target as before; perhaps the robots would be able to shoot now.

“Come on, start firing!” Tatsu shouted, trying to ignore the pain.

[Jijeka-Te]

Seeing Tatsu go down, Ji quickly changed her plan. She turned, dove, and brought her crook down to jab the same part of his wing that she'd jabbed earlier.

She wasn't really sure what their goal was at this point. The plan seemed to be to prevent the 'bots from firing as long as possible... but what would buying more time achieve, aside from buying more time?

[Chadin]

"Ugggnnn..." I groaned as that swirling haze brought on by the stun rounds finally began to lift. At first my vision was blurry and all the shouting was just a garbled mess to me, but as my sight came back into focus and I saw what was happening, it was like getting a jolt through my body as the rest of my senses kicked into high gear. My eyes darted around for my crossbow and soon found it lying close beside where I'd collapsed. In a flurry of fur and flying sand I snapped my crossbow into my hands, rolled across the sand so that I now lay prone facing the line of Swatbots.

Don't ask my why, but for some reason, I found myself pausing before I fired and prayed that I could get my first shot off unnoticed and get the chance for a second. I didn't realize it at the time but that same strange phenomenon that occurred while me and my feline thief friend were infiltrating Robotnik's base happened again. The air around me became deathly silent, even as I squeezed the trigger and a brilliant streak of red flew out of the crossbow.

"Order to fire acknowledged, all units, prepare to open -*" That last word disappeared along with the centre of the Swat-bot commander's optic sensor in a shower of sparks and smoke. The other Swat-bots all turned their heads as one in confusion, still expecting the commander unit to finish giving its order. But that order never came as the commander unit tipped over and crashed onto the sand dead and lifeless.



If robots could panic, this would probably be the closest thing to it. The other Swat-bots snapped their arms up, scanning wildly for where the shot had come from and calling out to one another.

"Danger Will Robinson, Danger!!"

"I am not Will Robinson!"

"Roger, Roger."

"I am not Roger, either. I am unit 6478-33"

But because all of them were so totally focused on the drama playing out with Tatsu, they didn't see the shot. And because of my peculiar new ability to deafen my shots, they didn't even hear the shot either so they were totally at a loss as to what was shooting at them.

"Command unit disabled. Cause: unknown. Command structure disabled, switching to full autonomy mode.

It WORKED!! The bots were so completely focused on Tatsu, Gail and Jii, that they hadn't noticed the shot and didn't hear it either. I'd never seen a Swat-bot painted differently like that one was before, so on a hunch I had decided to take it down first; and now the other Bots were temporarily confused. Now was our chance! If we could just break up that line of Swat-bots, we just might be able to get ourselves off this beach and turn this fight completely on its head. They wouldn't stay confused long, but now we had a brief chance to make a break for it into the safety of the jungle. And with the loss of their commander, and the personal knowledge I have of a Swat-bots very limited programming, we just might be able to make it out of this alive after all.

[Gail Strafer]

[Chadin skipped me, so I guess I should post to fill in this round.]

Yesssssssss!

Gail gave a toothy grin as Tatsu went down like a sack of potatoes. While Jii busied herself attacking the demon again, Gail busied himself shooting the other bots to take advantage of the distraction.

Dropping down to one knee, he started at the far end of the line, blasting off one magnum round for each SWATbot that entered his sights. On the third shot, the Whipcrack clicked empty.

Damn you!

Since he had no cover, he laid down prone roughly behind Tatsu to present a difficult target. Once there, he frantically emptied out the revolver and slipping more bullets into the chambers.

Curiously, he noticed he was not being fired upon. While sparing a glance up, he noticed that somehow, the commander of the SWATbots was down for the count. But how did that happen? Gail hadn't shot him, and he hadn't heard anyone else fire...

Still reloading, he glanced around wondering where the shot could have come from. Off to the far side, he saw Chadin clutched to that crossbow, pointing it where the SWATbot had just been standing. But how had he fired without being heard?

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Right. Gail quickly finished up reloading, although if any of the SWATbots managed to get off shots he wouldn't have time to bring the gun to bear before they could.

[Tatsuhiro]

[“URGGG!! What do you think your doing, you stupid robots?!?! Command Structure enable,-I- am your commander! Now, shoot damn you, shoot! I’m ORDERING you to open fire NOW!!!!”]


While Rose was trying to fix the mess with the SWATbots; Tatsu struggled to get off the ground, gritting his teeth. He managed to get into a kneeling position, his leg screaming for him to stop putting pressure on his right leg. This would change where Jii was trying to hit. Not only would she most likely slam into him, but her crook only managed to hit him square in the back. He turned his head, to see Jii.

[Jijeka-Te]

Jijeka-Te did indeed slam into Tatsu... and bounce off. He was a lot tougher than he looked.

Ouch! What the heck is he made of?

She landed roughly in a low position, just in time for Tatsu to turn to face her. Attempting to shrug off the crash, she stood, held her crook like a fighting staff, and said nothing.

[Gail Strafer]

[Posting now to restore the order]

Gail snapped the revolver's chambers closed as he finished reloading. As before, he simply continued giving one bullet to each SWATbot as he fired at them from left to right across the shooting line.

[Chadin]

[Sorry about that post order thing, just figured I'd weasel in and get things rolling again quickly. Didn't mean to throw a monkey wrench into things.]

"Acknowledged, opening fire!!" Unlike previously when the Swat-bot commander had essentially slaved its targeting data to its' counterparts, now the Swat-bots were firing at anything and everything in a completely haphazard way. It was almost like watching panicked cavalry firing at anything and everything instead of the crisp coordinated fire of before.

Unfortunately, Rose's instructions were simply to open fire; and that is exactly what they were doing. Shots were flying everywhere, but now there was no careful coordination of fire. This was almost pure chaos. It would appear unfortunately, that they Swat-bots took their orders much like any other computer, literally. Unless Rose told them to focus on a specific target, they were just going to maintain free-firing until everything was dead or told to stop.

Still, shots were still heading down-range toward our heroes. Gail and Chadin, both lying prone would be much more difficult targets to hit, and with Jii in a low crouch behind Tatsu, it also made her a difficult target to hit without Tatsu taking a few rounds as well.

Gail's magnum rounds slammed into the first Swat-bot in the line to Gail's left about where the shoulder meets the chest. The round in reality had little real impact, but it did damage the limb's rotator, jamming the Swat-bot's shooting arm in an awkward position that made accurate shooting much more difficult. The second to right took a direct hit in the chest and while the shot did buckle the chest plate and cause the bot to stagger backwards, it unfortunately did not put it down entirely. The third shot however was much more effective. By skill or fluke, the shot managed to squeeze through the narrow gap between the Swat-bot's shoulders and its dome-shaped head and severe some critical circuitry in the neck. Sparks and motor oil spewed out of the breach as the bot collapsed onto the sand.

The sand around Gail and I exploded and popped as some of the lesser well aimed energy blasts struck around them, flash-frying the sand into glass. But despite that, I pumped back another shot and fired at the line of Swat-bots. I hit the same one on the far left as Gail. But when I saw him proceed to hit others in the line faster than I could fire, I quickly switched targets and fired on the two Swat-bots that had started to approach Tatsu before all hell had broken loose.

When the second volley of magnum rounds came, the Swat-bot on the far left had already taken a hit from Chadin too before it took another hit to the torso, just above the hip where the armour is weaker. This time, the heavy slug punched through, causing considerable damage to the internal systems. At last that one finally fell into a pile of scrap metal. The additional shots to the next one in the line hit quite close to where the previous shot hit. This time, the armour could not take the force and a quarter sized hole was punched through the armour. The shot came quite close to the Swat-bot's core, causing a wild reaction to occur and the bot to explode in a brilliant fireball. The explosion knocked several of the Swat-bot's in the line to the ground.

The shots fired by Chadin into the forward-most Swat-bots ripped through the first Swat-bot's helmet, destroying it outright. The second shot did a hefty toll on the second one's armour, but it still remained up, and the most prominent threat since it would by far have the best chance of hitting any of the heroes.

[Whew!!! that's a lot of action to account for!!]

[Tatsuhiro]

He turned fully around, his face showing a controlled furry. He got his left foot in position, as he put all his weight onto it. He put his hands on the ground as his right out stuck out limply as it continued to bleed. He pushed off quickly from the ground, spiraling himself with his claws spinning with him as black and violet energy helped him to blast forward.

[Driving Frang]

Being so low to the ground it sent sand flying up everywhere behind him. It would literally create a little channel from where the technique would hit the ground the hardest.

[Jijeka-Te]

(Controlled... furry? Er, interesting mental image there...)

Ji had not seen that coming. Whatever it was.

She almost managed to dodge sideways in time, but got knocked into the air as Tatsu's attack clipped her. She tried to glide down with her neck frills, but one of the robots' shots tore through it, creating a clean hole and sending her crashing violently and painfully to the ground.

"Your Highness!"

Hm. When had Anu recovered?