Porter rolled aside as Artemis's fist ploughed through a storage warehouse, shredding the metal and boring a large hole. Without hesitation, the general had already turned and fired her shotgun, arm still entrapped in the wall, and Porter had sprung away to dodge it. He was beginning to adapt to the reckless style of Artemis, preparing himself for her relentless assaults.

With Artemis, if there was a chance to attack, it had to be taken. There were no setups, no grace periods, no displays of technical prowess. she didn't spend time staring him down or flaunting her talent. She wanted him executed as quickly as possible, and Porter was fairly sure anyone else on the team would've been caught by surprise by now and killed. One more reason why he couldn't lose this fight.

The glowing orb fizzled around the head of White Storm, an embodiment of chi that was always tracking him. Hiding and dodging was useless, and Porter's drenched clothes and panting breath made it quite clear it would just wear him down. His had was being played for him: Artemis wanted a fight.

Then I'll give her one. Porter rocketed forwards, heading straight for his new target in his opponent. His twin swords cut through the air beside him as he moved, trailing along his body. Artemis had wrenched her appendage free, and was turning to face the challenger. Her wide grin could be felt straight through the metal of her battlesuit, but Porter didn't falter.

The shotgun was raised up, levelled directly at Porter's chest. Both of them knew he had to dodge, had to make some sort of move to get out of this situation. It was why Artemis' finger was tight on the trigger, anticipating a feint, and why Porter wasn't running at top speed.

The gap closed. Neither had wavered. The trigger was squeezed, unleashing a barrage of shrapnel at close-range that collided with Porter's chest.

And promptly passed straight through.

With unimaginable speed, Porter had moved past Artemis, appearing behind her in a flurry of lightning, lashing out at her with his foot and booting her forwards. He struck down with his swords, attempting to sever off her arms at the joints, but Artemis, shotgun dangling downwards, shocked Porter with another shot, one aimed at the ground that helped propel her backwards just enough to dodge his swipe.

The two swords drove into the ground, their points sliding in fairly deep. Before Porter had a chance to rip the weapons free, Artemis' gun was at his face, and he made a hasty decision. He released the handles of his blades, dashing away before he could be blasted to pieces. He watched with displeasure as the orb still followed him, sitting just beside his face.

What now? There weren't a lot of other weapons Porter knew about. His hand-to-hand abilities had never been that great, and an enemy with a shotgun held a vast advantage. The short range of the weapon meant he would be enabling his own death if he charged in bare-handed. But other than that, he was just going to be sitting out here anyways, not really doing anything at all. Something had to be better than nothing, didn't it?

A circular, metallic object fell between his feet, small lights blinking across its surface. Their speed was increasing, hurting Porter's eyes as he stared at them. It was when they stopped, when the flashing ceased and held, that his brain clicked into place: a grenade.

The White Storm's speed was enough to get some distance away from the bomb previously between its feet, but it was too late to escape the blast radius. The Goliath was knocked backwards, bouncing off the ground twice before slamming into a reinforced bunker, sending reverberations throughout the machine. Porter's head spun in the cockpit, his mind in a blurry daze, but he willed himself back onto his feet as quickly as possible. He wasn't really thinking, wasn't strategizing or analyzing what was in front of him; his vision had hardly come together yet for him to even register what was going on.

But he knew Artemis would be in front of him in an instant, and wouldn't hesitate to blow his head off. That was his only concern as he shot up onto his feet. Sure enough, warning sirens blared throughout the cockpit of an approaching Goliath moving at high speed, and he twisted to the side to dodge the charge of The Archer.

Vision finally returned in whole for Porter, and the world swam into view. But he had felt part of his brain turning off in these last few moments, an annoying, chatty, doubtful part of him that wanted to think about the fight, to try and figure out the best way. His reaction to the grenade had been natural, had been exactly that, a reaction. His rise and dodging of Artemis while barely fully conscious was another sign. This was a different fight now, a fight without thoughts or limits or restraints. This was when Porter could shine.

The White Storm darted out of cover, no longer caring about the sphere that tracked it. It was another collision course with Artemis, but this time the general didn't hesitate in firing, attempting to force Porter off his course.

There was an alert inside the cockpit, one Porter had been subconsciously aware of before he had started this deadly dash. His battlesuit was indicating his current lack of weapons, but it was not advising against his upcoming actions. It was offering to replace them.

The sides of the White Storm's thighs cracked open, hydraulic steam venting out through the spaces as twin compartments opened up. Porter's hands dove into the gap as two swords shot up to meet his fingers, and he withdrew the replacement weapons, identical to his previous ones. The weapons became a blur in front of his body in an instant, slicing through the variety of shrapnel Artemis had fired at him, deflecting the bullets to the side as he broke through the attack.

Porter delivered a single slash across the chest of The Archer before Artemis could react and break free. The general shot backwards, carried on the force of Porter's assault, and quickly rebounded, keeping her distance and finally hesitating for a moment as she analyzed the new situation. Porter was panting within the cockpit as the adrenaline flowed through him and his conscious mind slowly returned to his body. It was only then that he realized where he had just pulled his new blades from, and the vents snapped shut on the White Storm. It seemed that Gretta had made some upgrades over the past month, and Sigma must have been grabbing resources for her on his scavenging trips to the mainland. Crafty, that the two of them had a deal worked out, but Porter wasn't about to complain. Those changes had just saved his life.

Artemis, on the other hand, had suffered minimal damage. There was a gouge across the chest, digging into the thick, armour plating that made up the point on the front of the warmachine. It was too heavy to be penetrated easily, and it seemed that if Porter wanted to take her down, the front was out of the question. He would need an entirely different means of fighting her if he wanted to win. Trying to get at her from the sides or behind was nearly impossible with her tracking his every motion, leaving him with limited options other than to try and break through the front.

The wandering eye of Porter caught sight of his two swords, still driven into the ground, a bit of a distance apart. He had a flash of insight, a moment where his learning in the classroom suddenly broke through into his battle-mind, and he realized what had to be done. It was strange to find this new method of thinking, to be consciously aware and engaged in combat and yet utilizing the skill normally reserved for when he was in a trance. He needed to think though, to process information and analyze properly, because it was the only way he could come up with creative solutions like this.

Before Artemis could recover to fire off more rounds, Porter had closed the gap, his blistering speed too fast to follow. While Artemis could move forward at equal speeds with ease, she had no way to dodge or escape at such velocities. But Porter wasn't interested in another attack on her front. Both he and the general knew that he could barely penetrate her defenses, and in the time it took him to break through, she could fill his chest with metal.

Instead, Porter drove his shoulder into the chest of the Enian warmachine, knocking it backwards. He drove his two swords into the ground beside him, digging the points through the steel of the base. He then used them as a slingshot, rocking backwards before hurtling himself forwards, shooting after Artemis before she even had a chance to hit the ground.

The general was ready though, and even as she floated through the air, her gun was cocked and levelled, ready to unload. She squeezed the trigger, the sound reverberating through the air as the ammunition inside was flung outwards. Porter had already anticipated such a retaliation though. It was why he was just slightly off-centre when he had launched himself, and it was why the shot blew a chunk out of the side of the White Storm's abdomen; heavy damage, but not critical.

The blast was not enough to cease Porter's momentum either, and his hand reached out, grabbing onto the heavily reinforced faceplate of The Archer, the machine hovering in the air for a brief second before its feet began to touch the ground. That was when Artemis realized she had lost, when her Goliath, even in that fraction of a second, gave up in Porter's arms.

For she too could see her positioning, that she had been flung back into the middle of the four swords pinned in the ground, all as part of Porter's plan. Lightning crackled through the air, leaping in between the four blades, forming a ring around the two combatants. They had reached the exact centre and Porter, as he had schemed, would act as the central conduit for the power growing around him, for the energy he was gathering in the square.

A bolt struck down from the sky, connecting with both battlesuits and coursing through them. It pinned Artemis in place and shot up the arm of the White Storm, smashing into the head unit of The Archer. Metal creaked before splinting and shattering altogether, a mess of oils and circuitry exploding from between Porter's fingers. Not even the fortifications of the Goliath could withstand such a tremendous burst of power, all channeled through a single source. Normally, it would be impossible to gather so much energy in a single source, but by spreading it out before drawing it in for an instant, Porter had significantly raised his output, obliterating his opponent's defenses.

The rest of The Archer shuddered before collapsing onto the ground, thick, black smoke curling up from its corpse. The electronic components throughout the machine were shot, but with the core processors in the head destroyed, it didn't matter how functional the rest of the body was. It was a complete and total victory for Porter, even with his own smoking hole torn from his side. It was the end of the assault, and the beginning of their rescue.

* * * * *

Mother Gaia set to work quickly. Across the back of the thin Goliath were massive rods, four of them, rectangular in shape, that fanned outwards. Within them were housed various controls for the spheres that hovered around the battlesuit, but they also stored spare parts, and scrap metals. The orbs drew from these leftovers, withdrawing pieces and then welding them onto the minor injuries of the other warmachines.

The White Storm and the Blue Blur were the hardest, and they could only be sealed, their wounds closed off to prevent leakage and exposure, but they weren't replaced. In biological terms, it was a bandaid fix at best. But it would have to do. They wouldn't be able to pilot their Goliaths within the confines of the base, but with the enemy battlesuits incapacitated, there was a hope that they wouldn't their warmachines anymore. They just had to be functional enough to escape, and that was all.

It would be Irina who could pose the largest problem. Intelligence gathered from the Red Scarf Gang, and by Sigma's hacking, had made it quite clear she was not in a normal state of mind. Anyone who opened the door to her cell took the risk of getting a rather cold welcoming, and Porter and the gang certainly didn't look like a group about to bust out a prisoner. For all they knew, Irina barely felt like a prisoner, and was only angry, angry at Syn and at those who were keeping her from him.

The real weapon, the trump card that Porter held, would be information. The source of Syn, the reason he existed, the causation behind McCormack's death, could all be tied back to the multiple governments of the corrupt nations. The Enian Federation would probably take the brunt of the rage, even if it was the Artisan Confederate who crafted Syn, but it didn't matter. So long as they could convince Irina that she should be mad at a specific group, and that they could offer her an opportunity to channel that, she would comply. Or she would simply run off on her own, deranged and insatiable. Even that would be favourable, Chandana had said, because it would cause a disruption of order. If they couldn't get her, they certainly wouldn't let the Enian Federation keep her in captivity.

"We're ready then?" The pilots had disembarked from their crafts and had gathered at the entrance to the base. They each clutched the pistol that was kept in the cockpit of every Goliath, lest the pilot be forced out of their machine in unfavourable circumstances. Only Raul had left his behind, choosing to go with his own weapons, blades, knives, and shuriken, among other hidden devices. The rest did their best to hide their nervous faces but they were failing.

This was the real difficulty to their mission. While the Goliaths had been a test, they had felt confident in their skills. But they were pilots at their best, not soldiers, and none of them seemed entirely fit for combat. Nami was just a tiny girl, Riya was a wisp, and Ardwen wasn't much better. Only Raul and Porter had directly fought the Gremlins, and Porter didn't even remember it, meaning he was only semi-conscious, and probably wouldn't be able to replicate that.

Still, this was part of their preparation. Though they could not hide their fears, they were set to face them. The group nodded as a whole to answer Porter's question, and without further hesitation, they strode through the doors and down into the depths of the military base.