FicWad

Mission 07: Assault on Kabaal
"Hey A!"
Armada was startled at the sudden shout by Laiserta and her fingers slipped, dropping the small tool in her right hand and getting a shock from touching the circuits accidentally. She jumped back with a jolt, sending several other tools and parts of the engine flying while shaking her right hand in a futile attempt to eliminate the numbing feeling in her fingers.
Laiserta came stomping into the engine room, her metal soled shoes making a rather large amount of noise. She squeezed through a few narrow areas before coming to one of the farthest thrusters. It was a small engine, one of nearly a dozen used when accelerating. Laiserta laughed and rolled her eyes when she saw her comrade beneath the machine. Somebody needs a hobby...
"Hey!" Laiserta bent over and shouted once more, getting another jolt from Armada.
"WHAT?!" the commander shot up, giving her most recent employee a death-glare. Fortunately for Laiserta, she was a little too 'thick' to understand the extent of the former's anger.
"We got a call! Aren't you going to answer it?" Laiserta beamed with excitement, giving her superior a childish grin.
"Lai," Armada sighed while veins began to protrude from her forehead, "I'm a little busy at the moment. Do you think you could answer it?" she finished in a flat, unwavering tone through clenched teeth and fists in an attempt to hold back thoughts of strangling the girl.
Laiserta stood upright and adjusted her sunglasses some, as the light in the room was becoming a little too much for her. "They refuse to talk to me. They only want to talk to you," she finished while her eyes wandered around the small area.
"Did you have Trunks get it?" Armada asked, her rage still rising at the girl's antics.
"Nah, he's not here right now. Something about 'I'm going to take a walk,' blah-blah-blah," Laiserta finished while mocking the young man's voice.
Armada growled lowly for a moment, before getting a marvelous idea. "Okay Lai, I'll go answer the call," she said with an overly fake smile plastered across her face, "but I need you to do something for me." Armada looked over and pointed to a group of manual circuit breakers several feet away.
***
"A quarter of a million beta?!" Armada exclaimed while talking to the woman on screen in the communications room.
"Yes," the woman nodded. "That is what the client is offering. As you know, I cannot reveal his identity to you-it's my job not to-but let me assure you, he is very serious and very capable of paying."
"All right then," Armada said lightly, still with a bit of disbelief. "Tell him we'll do it."
"Right," the woman nodded. "The details will be sent to you in under an hour." With that, she deftly cut off the transmission.
Armada reached over and shut off the transmission on her end. "Two hundred and fifty-thousand beta," she said to herself softly. "That kind of money would go a long way with the ship." She looked around at her creation. The Verdandi was in dire need of repairs after Laiserta had managed to anger a group of pirates while leaving the SOMA station. She was trying to fire at a rogue piece of garbage in the flight path of the ship, thinking that she had mastered the controls of the weapons. The nearby-and at the time docile-pirates didn't take kindly to her attack.
Armada sat thinking for a moment. What could be so dangerous if they're offering that much money? /She sighed. /At any rate, I couldn't really refuse. Somebody who can drop that kind of cash like it's nothing isn't somebody I want as an enemy in the near future.
"Ah, ouchouchouchouch!!" Laiserta came running into the small room to find her captain seated before the console. "I got shocked!" she screamed while jumping up and down, holding her right hand with her left.
Armada laughed. "Gee, now you know how I feel," she rolled her eyes at Laiserta while leaving the room.
"Aren't you gonna patch me up?" Laiserta whimpered after her.
"C'mon, the infirmary's open," Armada laughed while heading back to the room.
***
"No; it's anonymous."
"But how? She didn't look too 'anonymous' to me!"
Trunks had just walked through the door to the Verdandi and heard his two shipmates conversing in the bridge. So, he headed in.
"Hey," Armada gave him a slight wave.
"Look, it's the boy wonder!" Laiserta exclaimed with a sarcastic joy.
"Hi Lai," Trunks grumbled back. The dark haired woman was becoming far more annoying than Armada, and fast.
"We got a mission," Armada said, looking towards Trunks from her seat on the console of the bridge.
"Yeah, from some stuffy lady," Laiserta chimed in.
"No;" Armada growled annoyed, "it was from an anonymous client. She just relays the mission between me and the client so I won't know who it is."
"What?" Laiserta asked after a moment to think about it.
"Forget it," Armada rolled her eyes at Laiserta.
Trunks sat in the seat to the weapons console. "So where are going and what're we doing?"
"Don't know yet," Armada replied much calmer than before. "They should be sending us all the briefing junk shortly."
"You accept missions without even knowing what exactly you're going to do?" Trunks asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Hah. When you can handle any situation, there's no need to know what it is before you say 'yes,'" Armada mocked, a smirk appearing on her features. "You only need to know how many figures are in the paycheck."
"That's reassuring to know," Trunks stated flatly and with biting sarcasm. "But how do you know you can handle /anything/?" he asked suddenly.
"Because I haven't come across anything that I can't," Armada replied plainly.
"Okay, but you haven't been in every situation known to man," Trunks continued, "so what makes you think that you can conquer things you haven't experienced yet?"
"Trust me, there's not much left I haven't been through," Armada replied darkly. "Hey," she glanced around the room, "where'd Lai go?"
"Good question," Trunks agreed as the black-haired mercenary was out of sight.
Laiserta bounced back into the bridge excitedly and hopped into the pilot's seat. "We're going to the border," Laiserta said with a sense of anticipation while bringing up a small display of Bmyhad. "There's a Juu'n fort we're supposed to take over at Kabaal, in the mountains," she said, pointing to a small dot on the map. Armada stood and turned to look at the map.
"Wait," Trunks looked up, "why are we taking over one of Juu's forts? I thought we were helping Juu now."
Armada cocked an eyebrow. "Didn't you hear me just say that I had no idea what we were going to do when I accepted?"
"Well why didn't you wait to find out?!" Trunks shouted his question in contempt, slightly angered by the apathy of his employer.
"Because the guy's offering two hundred and fifty-thousand beta, Trunks. Do you realize how much money that is?" Armada shot back, now seemingly annoyed.
"Sorry, I thought that you might have had a higher standard than that," the young man replied with disdain.
"As long as I run things around here, you'll do what I say. And if I accept a mission, so do you," she shot back, her eyes narrowing. "You will not question the integrity of my orders, or my authority. Understood?"
Trunks stood and gave his superior a shady look before turning away and leaving for his room without another word. Last thing he needed was some lecture on authority. Laiserta sat with wide eyes as she'd watched the event unfold from her chair turned slightly to the side.
"We're leaving once I'm done working on the engines," the commanding mercenary shouted at the young man as he walked away. She 'hmphed' once before returning below normal decks to the engine room and continue her work.
Laiserta sighed. /There's definitely too much friction between those two/. She returned to the pilot's console and began surfing through some of the ship's files.
***
It had been several hours since one-third of the crew had walked out of the bridge, and Laiserta still sat in the pilot's seat, slaving away over numbers and figures before her.
From a small monitor on the bottom right side of the lists upon the screen Laiserta looked at, Armada spoke. "Run the diagnostics again." The transmission snowed slightly over her image as Laiserta did as she was told.
After a few moments, Laiserta read the numbers from the monitor. "Eighty-two percent," she started, "still not satisfactory."
The image on the monitor sighed. "Damn. I can't figure out what you did that trashed this engine so badly. I'm doing every tweak in the book but nothing works."
"Well, maybe it's not the engine itself," Laiserta suggested, thinking outside the proverbial box. "Are all the connections working?"
"I've checked and rechecked more times than I can remember," Armada replied exasperated. "I know this ship well enough to build a replica in my sleep, and I've checked anything that could be a possible problem." She wiped sweat from her forehead with her right hand. "Well, as long as we don't need to speed around places, this'll have to work for now. When I get back to the bridge we're heading out," she stated, rising from her seat on the ground next to the dysfunctional engine.
"But, uh...what about the boy wonder?" Laiserta asked her superior.
"We can go on ahead without him. We'll just leave him on the ship if he decides not to participate. Besides," the younger woman continued, "I didn't need him before, I don't need him now."
The transmission ended and Laiserta growled. "Way to be a team, huh?"
"Sarcasm too, eh?"
"Ah!" Laiserta shouted, startled by the voice behind her. She spun around in her chair wildly, stopping it after three and a half rotations so she could face the man behind her. "Risu, you scared me!" she exclaimed with slightly wide eyes.
"Well Lai, there aren't too many things I've seen that are scarier than you," Trunks replied a laugh.
"Of course there's not-wait a second," Laiserta began with a boast before finishing her sentence in thought over what was said.
/She's really not that bright/, Trunks thought with a nervous laugh.
Laiserta was still lost in thought when the ship's commander entered the bridge. "So you decided to come along?" she scoffed, crossing her arms with a smirk while planting still on the other side of Laiserta.
"Never said I wasn't," Trunks grumbled lowly. He then noticed how Armada was covered in dirt and...soot? Whatever it was, it was black and dust-like, enough for her to nearly leave a trail of it while heading into the small room. "Looks like you guys already went without me," he held back a laugh.
Armada's right eye twitched. "Very funny."
"You should've seen her trying to get under the main thrusters! Now that was entertainment!" Laiserta exclaimed, bursting out with laughter.
Trunks leaned over and whispered to Laiserta behind a hand. "Yeah, it's terrible isn't it; especially since she built this ship."
Laiserta covered her mouth with a hand and whispered back. "Definitely. It's like she has no idea what's going on."
"You know," Armada began as a vein started to show in her forehead, "it would probably be best for you guys if you didn't talk about your superior officer as if she wasn't STANDING RIGHT HERE!" she shouted the final three words at her underlings, sending them back a bit.
"Geez," Laiserta retorted while turning back around in her chair. "Kirtesh yul-le donna," she muttered under her breath in her native, Taydran tongue (which, by the way, sounds very eastern European-the accent, anyways. But only when Lai uses her first language. Other than that, she sounds pretty normal. And it's not really any sort of language. Just gibberish. So don't look into it. Ahem, going on).
Armada stopped and turned to point a finger at Laiserta, as she was in the middle of heading to her room when Laiserta spoke. "Believe me, I can find out what you just said!"
"Heh, good luck!" Laiserta laughed back. "Not even everybody on Taydr can speak native Taydran!" She then stuck her tongue out at the blonde woman in a very childish manner.
Armada steamed and growled slightly before continuing on her way down the main corridor. "Just get us to Kabaal!" she barked out behind herself, flailing a hand back in a 'move-that-direction' motion.
"Aye-aye, Captain!" Laiserta mocked with a deeper voice. With that, Laiserta began initiating the sequences needed for the Verdandi to launch.
The only thing Trunks could do after watching the scene unfold was...laugh.
***
The Verdandi sat in a fairly dense forest outside the Juu'n fort. Well, it was a dense forest around the ship. There was a bare spot and-anyway, the crew sat inside reviewing, or debating, or arguing, on how to go about the mission.
"You smell like engine fodder," Laiserta shot at the figure to her left.
"Excuse me?! I just had a shower!" the woman in digital armor yelled back.
"Oh, right, I forgot; that's how you smell all the time!" Laiserta taunted back with a large grin. After a loud 'thump,' she was left whimpering while Armada continued to speak.
"Juu's military forces are slim at best, so there shouldn't be many soldiers inside," Armada said while pointing to areas on the map around the fort, as shown on the monitor before the three. "It won't take long to finish once we get past their first-and probably only-wave."
"Wait," Laiserta interjected, apparently now unharmed, "Juu doesn't have many border forts. I mean, their border with Bmyhad isn't that long based on the geography."
"And?" Armada asked while raising an eyebrow at the raven-haired gunman.
"So, out of the forces they have, more will be in their forts. I mean, with all the stuff in the news about Tere and whatnot, and the whole issue of securing their border from any illegal gate-jumping, I'm sure they'll have more soldiers on duty in these forts." Laiserta actually spoke with intelligence for once.
"She does make a good point," Trunks stated, looking across and over Laiserta's head at his employer.
"Okay then," she nodded, looking back towards the monitor, "use those special eyes of yours and tell us how many are in there," she finished, looking towards the maroon-eyed woman.
"I can't do that," Laiserta said quietly with a slight whimper while rubbing the index finger of her right hand in a small circle on the console before her.
"What?! And why the hell not?!" Armada shouted, giving an incredulous look.
"Because it's too far away!" Laiserta shouted back, appearing to have fangs all of a sudden.
"What, you need to be two leaps away for the whole thing to work?" Armada shot back sarcastically.
"No, but I don't exactly have a lot of distance on these things you know!" Laiserta grumbled back.
"Uh, can we get back to the task at hand?" Trunks asked nervously.
"Would you stay out of this!" both women shot back simultaneously. Trunks jumped back a little as the pair continued on with their duel-of-words. After a while, Laiserta began to pseudo-cry.
Laiserta reached over and grabbed Trunks by the shirt, pulling him face-to-face with her. "You gotta do something! She's so mean to me! And I'm so helpless!" Laiserta continued on with her pretended hurt. She released Trunks and turned her head to the side, sighing before she spoke. "I am such a tortured soul."
Is she crazy? he thought before Armada landed another smack on the older woman's head.
"Will you cut the drama?!" their commander yelled at the sunglasses-wearing mercenary.
Laiserta sat up; unhurt while she placed her head into her right hand, leaning her elbow on her crossed legs. "You take the fun out of everything," she sighed.
In an attempt to get the group refocused in their mission, Trunks spoke. "So if we get Lai close enough, she can give us an idea of what we're dealing with?"
"That's the idea," Armada replied nonchalantly. "IF she manages not to screw it up," she narrowed her eyes at the genetically enhanced woman.
"Of course I won't!" Laiserta shot back with an air of superiority.
"Shall we then?" Trunks asked aloud. The three mercenaries left their ship in no time, and began their slow approach of the fort.
***
"What are we waiting for?!" Laiserta whined while holding her twin pistols in her hands.
"Quiet!" Armada yelled over to the Taydran in a loud whisper. "We have to wait for the target time."
Laiserta scrunched her face in annoyance. She felt vibrant; alive when she was on the battlefield. Her anticipation for a fight was making her antsy and impatient. Couldn't they just GO already?!
"Someone's coming!" Trunks reported to his comrades. He could hear footsteps coming from within the fortress they stood only meters away from. "Lai, take a look."
"Right," she nodded in response. Her irises and pupils both moved in odd motions before Laiserta found herself looking at the fort in a form of an X-ray vision mode. "Risu!" she shouted after moment. "There's gotta be like two hundred of 'em!"
"Two hundred?" Armada repeated while looking to Trunks. "There's no way-"
"Here they come!" Laiserta shouted while her eyes returned to their normal and first vision.
As told by Laiserta, nearly two hundred soldiers-armed for more than just defense-poured out of the fort. As the soldiers charged, the crew held its ground for just a moment longer. "Remember," Armada spoke, "try not to kill anyone." With that, the three mercenaries split and began attacking the small army at different locations.
Laiserta dove into the fray, shooting many of the soldiers once or twice in the legs so as to make them unable to walk. At least if they couldn't move much, they wouldn't be as much of a threat. A few soldiers came close behind her. Laiserta turned and deftly nailed both with a few kicks of her metal-soled feet. This is kinda fun she noted mentally while continuing to blast away at her attackers.
Trunks had no problem holding his own. He was using his far superior strength to toss those away who came too close, and kept the others back by firing fairly-harmless ki-blasts at them. True, no energy blast was harmless. But with the speed and control he had, nobody would get seriously hurt unless they wanted it.
A commanding officer near the back of his crew pulled a soldier aside. "Ki-fighters! Get the Mayors!" The young recruit nodded vigorously and sped off inside the fort.
Armada noticed the retreat of the young man from where she was fighting the hordes. "Leaving so soon, eh?" she laughed while planting a foot into the face of one soldier and her left forearm into the gut of another.
Another soldier with a whistle clambered up a hill next to the fort. He fumbled around with the item in his hands while gaining his balance, and then blew the whistle hard, letting the high-pitched and very shrill sound tear through the air. "Retreat!" he shouted over the noise.
Laiserta had just run out of ammunition and pulled out her metal staff when the retreat was issued. The soldiers ran as fast as they could through the lightly-snow covered ground to reconvene in their shelter. Laiserta ran a few steps after them, stopping not too far from her male comrade. "Aww," she whined while turning to look at him, "just when it was getting really fun too."
Trunks laughed at Laiserta and shook his head. "Maybe they want to take the chase inside?" he heard Armada say from his right. She was still several yards off.
"Could be," he responded, "but why not bolt up the doors?" he asked while pointing to the wide open downgrade leading into the mostly-buried base. His comrade simply shrugged in response.
"Whoa, look at that!" Laiserta said with a sense of wonderment while pointing towards the complex. All three mercenaries watched as three men slowly walked out of the building. The trio stopped in the snow, only a few yards away from the fort.
Trunks narrowed his eyes at the sight, and so did Armada. Laiserta stood in puzzlement and blinked. "They're...unarmed?"
"Hardly," the young man to her right spoke. "Stay back Lai," he ordered her while beginning his approach. Laiserta sighed, crossing her arms across her abdomen with her pole in her right hand.
Armada had begun a slow approach as well. "Been a while since I fought somebody who was a challenge," she whispered to herself quietly. "Let's see how they do."
As he approached, Trunks began to notice that these three men were far different than he. Dark skin with dark markings across it. Pointed ears. Horns protruding from the forehead. And...claws? Okay, so maybe they were more beastmen than men-no matter. They were fighters and so was he; and losing this fight was something Trunks had no intention of doing.
Upon the close arrival of the two mercenaries, the three beastmen each began to float, no more than maybe six inches from the ground. Each was wearing a different colored breastplate with white shorts. The one on the left, closest to Laiserta, had spikey red hair and a red breastplate. He had the leanest frame. The one in the middle had lazy yellow hair and wore the matching yellow armor. He had the widest frame. And the one of the far right, closest to Armada, had short blue hair and a corresponding blue outfit. He was somewhere between Red and Yellow frame-wise.
Being impatient with what was happening, Laiserta charged at the beastman closest to her-Red. She reached back with her pole and struck the best across the chest, sending him back a bit. He recovered quickly and floated up higher into the air to escape another attack. "What the...?" Laiserta blinked.
By this time, the other two beastmen took that the attack of their comrade meant it was time to attack the other two mercenaries. Yellow charged at Trunks, and Blue at Armada respectively.
Trunks and Yellow started in a grapple-a bid for power. If it was strength he wanted, it would be strength he got. Trunks overpowered Yellow without much effort, sending the beastman flying to the ground. Yellow quickly recovered by leaning back on his haunches and springing back at the mercenary, using the force of the throw and momentum to hurdle himself back at his attacker. The two continued on, exchanging blows in mid air.
Red slashed out at Laiserta, but she managed to jump back before he reached her. She countered by flipping her pole end-over-end in her hand, getting the longer side outward, and forcing it into her opponent's chest. Red lost the air in his lungs to the Juu'n sky and tumbled backwards a bit, trying to regain it. Laiserta charged at him, causing him to fire an energy blast in return. Confused by this maneuver, Laiserta jumped to her right and rolled across the snowy ground, out of the way. She turned and looked in time to see part of the forest around Kabaal disappear into ash. Her eyes widened. So that was energy. Taking advantage of his opponent by noticing her shock and amazement at ki, Red fired continuing blasts at Laiserta. All she could do in return was run.
Trunks gave Yellow a hard right elbow to the face. He turned and saw Laiserta's predicament simultaneously. "Lai!" he cried out, blocking another hit from Yellow. "Hold on!" He threw down the beastman and fired a strong ki-blast at the creature. Trunks then took flight at Red and had the beastman sprawled across the ground in a matter of seconds.
Deeming Laiserta no longer a threat, Red and Yellow launched an all-out assault on Trunks together. Fighting one was fine, but two was more than a challenge. After batting away Red for a moment, Trunks kicked away Yellow. In the few seconds he had before the attackers would recover, he powered up and transformed into his Super Saiyan form.
At the sudden increase in her comrade's power, Armada instinctively turned to see Trunks sporting blonde hair. "What-?" she tried to question but Blue was back on the offensive and sent the young woman flying with a powerful roundhouse.
"Whoa!" Laiserta shouted from her position on the ground. Now that's not normal! she thought in a haze after seeing Trunks transform.
With renewed strength, Trunks easily tore away at the two creatures he fought simultaneously. He gave Red a few kicks, giving his slight figure a run for its money. Yellow no longer had the strength to go head-on at the demi-Saiyan, and tried using a few different attack angles. None seemed fairly effective. Trunks kept up the battle as Laiserta sat frozen in place where she'd been seated for a while now, watching with curiosity.
Blue had gained the upper hand against Armada after she'd let her guard down when Trunks did...whatever he did. Angered by her own mistake, Armada leapt at Blue, launching a barrage of punches and kicks. Most connected, others completely missed. Hit with a forceful kick to the ribs, Blue spun backwards and landed across the ground. He dug his right claws into the mud, and leapt back into the air. He pump-faked with his left hand and flung the dirt/mud/snow mixture into the eyes of the mercenary.
Blinded, Armada rubbed at her eyes furiously. Blue took advantage of the situation he created and grabbed the mercenary, lifting her into the air above his head. He reeled back and tossed her with unmatched force into the ground, head first. Armada slammed into the ground, skidding on her face nearly twenty meters before coming to a stop, where her body flipped over and she ended on her back.
Blue began to charge a rather large energy blast-preparing for the kill. Armada lie on the ground, rubbing slowly at her eyes to remove the dirt, but to no avail. After skidding on her face, the grime was far worse than that Blue had thrown at her.
Trunks noticed Blue preparing to fire and his incapacitated-at the moment, at least-employer for which Blue aimed. "Armada!" he shouted as Yellow got the best of him at the moment and planted him into the ground with a hard left elbow.
Armada heard her comrade call out her name, and could feel the blast coming. She defensively placed her arms over her head, bracing for the impact. In the few seconds in which all this happened, another set of eyes flew up to see Blue in the position of power. Armada cringed as Blue fired, preparing for the shot. She felt the energy explode, but... Curious as to what was going on, she opened her eyes slightly to see a dark shadow in the center of a blue flash. The bright light didn't help her vision and she cringed again, sealing both eyes shut. Once she'd done this, some great weight-an enormous amount, several times her own weight-came down upon her. Then...heat. Armada rubbed at her eyes one last time before opening them and wrapping her hands around the mass that lay bloodied over her body-Laiserta.
"Lai..." her own eyes widened at the battered corpse before her. Laiserta's body twitched, and Armada noticed that she was still breathing, despite the extent of the injuries upon her back. She removed her hand from her elder comrade's back, finding it covered in blood.
After seeing the events unfold behind himself, Trunks decided that with three-on-one, it was kill or be killed. He pulled Yellow in close and fired, incinerating the creature before he would have hit the ground. He moved towards Blue, but stopped when the creature cried out and grabbed at its chest. Blood...? Trunks watched as blood seeped out of the beast's chest while it collapsed to the ground. Red roared and headed for the demi-Saiyan, but it too stopped in its tracks after an immense scream. Trunks turned and saw mysterious soldiers clad in a deep violet and charcoal colored uniforms bounding through the hills and into the fort. They must've shot them he thought.
"Trunks!" Armada called out, struggling to lift Laiserta's frame. He immediately flew over and landed next to the two whom were still on the ground. "She's really heavy," Armada relayed to her comrade. The two worked together to lift their fallen comrade.
Geez/, Trunks thought, /she must weigh somewhere near five hundred pounds! The two quickly lifted their friend, flying back to their ship.
Laiserta dazed in and out of consciousness, but the last she saw were the soldiers in the violet/charcoal uniforms. And just before she blacked out, she could've sworn she'd seen them somewhere before.