Apex Piloting

I had to step away from this blog for a bit, as life got a lot busier (Sorry @perpetualxfire for doing so without notice, I couldn’t find the time to notify and it eventually slipped away from memory) Now that things are more stable however, I plan on coming back in full after I’ve made some changes. Titanfall is one of my greatest joys, though I’ve been having oc ideas pop into my head continuously and I think I should get them out there. So this will become a fandomless multi-muse blog. This will include: Melissa Cavallo of the Apex Predators merc unit and her Titan. A Legends Stormtrooper Commander along with her Novatrooper and Shadow Trooper squad. A Freelancer Lancer from the world of Anthem. And my Blackstone Legion Warden from For Honor. All of them will be cross-over compatible.

✮ There are always weaknesses, even if they’re hard to access. The thing had to powered by something, and she’d mounted mechs like that before. She had to get a bit creative, sure, but there was always something her grappling hook could latch onto, something she could shoot that would open a vulnerability in the armor… That wasn’t relevant, though. Not yet.

     |│  “ Hey, you’re a visitor here, not the other way      |│      around. Put the gun down and we won’t have      |│                                                       problems. ”

    Carolina dropped the camouflage, since they clearly knew that they were here, but she had her grappling gun out just in case she needed a quick escape. She spoke casually enough, magnifying the volume of her voice with a speaker in her helmet so that it carried without issue.

Melissa kept her rifle trained on the newcomer as they stepped out of hiding and announced themselves. The armour looked like nothing she’d seen before. Too advanced to be a Grunt, yet showed no signs of being a new model of Spectre. Well, strange armour or not, if she was a visitor, that meant this was a native, and something was always better than nothing. She snapped her rifle down as she called out. “Well, if we’re visitors, then count us lost. Stand down, big guy.” The giant cannon was put into a rest position, though the Titan did not stop looking around Carolina, and it always had one of it’s secondary optics on her from this point forward. Very paranoid for a machine, though understandable, given the circumstance.

✮ That was one hell of a war machine. This was almost certainly backup for the mercs; she couldn’t think of any other reason there would be an unmarked ship with a giant, heavily armed mech in it. Of course, she didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but perhaps it was best that she stay and observe for just a while longer.

    Of course, her camouflage wasn’t perfect; a particularly keen eye could spot her fairly easily, and any heat sensors would pick her up easily as well. She wasn’t invisible, just hard to see - and curious. That said, she and Church were already analyzing whatever they could on this mech just in case they wound up having to fight it. Any potential weak points, anywhere her grappling hook could catch hold of its armor, anywhere she could mount it and break something apart…

    Carolina had no intent of being hostile immediately, but she had learned long ago that it paid to be prepared.

The Titan did not appear to possess any weaknesses Carolina could exploit. It’s joints were well protected, and it’s armour was so thick anything short of a satchel charge would not pierce it. There were a multitude of points her grapple could catch, though most of those were on the front, where it would see her coming. The Titan was searching the forested area around the shuttle with a meticulousness only a machine could possess. Then it spoke, it’s primary optics flashing with each syllable.

It was a standard day on the IMC Garrison situated on the planet Yaldira in the Pentarum system. With one exception: Today hailed the arrival of the Apex Predators mercenary outfit. They had been hired by the local commander to bolster their forces for an upcoming string of attacks on Militia holdings. Having caught wind of this commander’s intentions, however, the Militia saw fit to send in an undercover operative to determine where they were striking and when, and not be caught in the process, lest the IMC change their plans entirely and force the acquired info to become useless to Marauder Corps. command.

Kurtis was sent in, posing as rookie Pilot Tobias Bedford. It wasn’t too hard really, he just needed to answer to that name and hide any and all disgust he might hold for the IMC and its practices. It seemed they brought a just a lance of Apex forces here, if not the whole troupe. Blisk, a Pilot in Holo-gear, a Pilot in A-Wall gear, a Stim Simulacrum, and the Grapple Pilot who had her Titan crush Kurtis in its grip when last they met. Most of the Apex Pilots kept to themselves, rarely interacting with the rank and file of the garrisoned forces. They were the topic of the town though, so to speak. It seems the grunts couldn’t keep quiet about any rumours they heard about them, or wondering why it was deemed Apex Pilots would order them about in the battlefield even if they were just mercenaries and not loyal soldiers.

@apex-piloting

“I don’t care how high-tech the rig is. You put a big enough explosive on a joint, you’re turning a Titan into a casket.”

Starter for @apex-piloting!

✮ Everything Church and Carolina had discovered so far about Chorus only served to continue making the situation worse. Naturally, they hadn’t wanted to run into everything uninformed for fear of making a poor decision, but at this point they were simply hoping to find a way to slow things down while they attempted to figure out just what they could do about it. Running interference for fallen ships felt like they were trying to hold back a tsunami with a small garden wall, but it was something.

    This particular discovery was not something small.

    The crash had been a smaller ship. By eye estimate, it wasn’t quite the size of a UNSC frigate, but it was definitely bigger than a Pelican - but this one didn’t seem to bear any UNSC markings at all, from cursory examination. It definitely didn’t look like a covenant ship (that she could identify, at least; she wasn’t exactly an expert on that matter, but their tech tended to be very identifiable), but she couldn’t place anywhere else this could come from. Except, perhaps, civilian tech, but last she knew there weren’t a lot of civilian ships flying around all the way out here.

    That didn’t leave a lot of options.

    Activating her adaptive camouflage, Carolina chose to wait a distance away, as a bioscan had picked up at least one organic survivor in the area. Given how little they knew of the current situation with Charon’s mercenaries, it was very possible that this was an intentional drop of back-up - but it seemed small for that. Any backup would surely comprise of more people than this, would it not? But Carolina wasn’t keen on running into a trap any time soon.

The last thing Melissa remembered before things went black was finishing up her contract with ARES on some backwater and was in transit with the artifact in a Widow class dropship. Too bad for her and the pilot that it chose that moment to do... something. All she knew was that she felt completely relocated and both the dropship pilot and her cargo was missing. She was halfway to the cockpit when the ship started shuddering and her Titan was warning her about rapid orbital descent. Luckily she had made it and strapped in, fighting a futile battle for control. Then she woke up.

Soon her body regained its sense of feeling, and with it, all the pain she was in. Thank the Void for automated medical programs. She thought as said programs in her helmet recognized the stress she was under and began administering various drugs, including painkillers and a mild combat stim to bring her back to full awareness. It wouldn’t make all the damage go away, but it’d let her focus on other things, like finding a safe spot and figuring out just where she was. 

First priority was running a perimeter check around the crash site.

Luckily, she could still feel her Titan’s presence in their link, which meant he was still active. Swapping to their private comm. channel, she called out. “Hey, BRT, you doing alright down there?” “Affirmative Pilot, armour integrity has only been superficially damaged by the crash, running internal diagnostics now. Are you alright Melissa?” Good ol’ BRT, everything governed by Protocol 3 must be going haywire at this point. “Yeah, I’m good, gonna have to lay low for a while though, agh. I’m opening the bay doors, do a quick perimeter sweep while I make my way out of this mess, don’t want anyone catching me by surprise.”

“What are you? An Imperial?” That didn’t lower Ezra’s blaster, but he didn’t fire.

@apex-piloting