Location: STS power plant, Stanistan
Date: 15/04/2165
Standpoint: Sophia Campbell

Sophia was still trying to understand the sarcasm in what Ivy had said earlier. Her, Ivy and Artyom had been exploring the western half of the sea and while Artyom and Ivy focused on the surroundings, Sophia tried to strategies on what to do for the various outcomes that could occur. However her brain kept going back to trying to understand sarcasm and jokes.

Sophia was generally a smart girl, she had learnt to play chess by 7 and was a master at it by 11, she had memorised the world map and all the geographic locations by the age of 15 and by 17 she had learnt the periodic table, the laws of Newton and the biological structures of creatures.

However since she had focused so much on learning and improving she barely had any time to joke around or be sarcastic. Which she partially regretted. If only I had tried to understand sarcasm and jokes just a bit she thought.

Suddenly Ivy broke her train of thoughts by saying "Wait what's that over there?". She pointed towards the north west to the left of the ruins of the Power Plant. Sophia quickly used the zoom module of her Mech and spotted a battalion of 7 Mechs walking away from the Power Plant, they were all Yang classed Chinese Mech's with the standard grey colour and red outline, 5 of them carried standard plasma swords and plasma rifles and 2 of them where carrying a massive platform which contained a lot of uranium.

Artyom [who had also used his zoom] said "This is serious, troops of a nation from the NWO on neutral ground? Stealing Stanistan's Uranium? Should we stop them?" Sophia said "I think we should alert Venator and Viper and standby until it's clear what these Chinese Mechs intend to do". Artyom argued "They could cross over to another NWO nation and thus we would be unable to prove that they were here in the first place, I say we send a distress signal to Viper and Venator to let us know we're in battle and try to stop these Chinese troops.

The decision ultimately came down to Ivy who was the second in command of the task force, she said "Negative Athena, we'll send a distress signal and then block these troops from leaving, however we wont engage in combat unless provoked."

Both Sophia and Artyom agreed. However before they could do anything, the leading Chinese Mech spotted them and quickly pointed towards the 3 lone Mechs, he then started to take something that was attached to his back".

Sophia quickly zoomed in and said "Be advised the leading mech seems to be pulling out a weapon". Artyom gave a small chuckle and said "What sort of weapon can hit us from that far? We're safe don't worry". Ivy quickly said "Ares focus on the Chinese, something is off here".

In the next moment it became clear that the lead Chinese Mech did have a weapon to damage the 3 as he pulled out a homing quad missile launcher and without warning launched 3 missiles all aiming at one of the 3.

Ivy quickly shouted "Artemis, Ares take cover!" Before using the pincer-claws of her Mech to quickly bury herself deep underground .

Easy for you to say Scorpius, not everyone has a mech with pincers capable of digging.  Sophia thought, then she remembered her jetpack and quickly activated it and flew into the air to a height of 250 meters since she knew that homing missiles could only fly to a height of 240 meters.

Below her she saw Artyom rush towards a nearby massive boulder and crouched behind it to try and protect himself.

The missile aiming for her Mech reached the height of 240 before flailing and falling back to the ground, diabled. The mech after Ivy also hit the ground harmlessly as it's target was nowhere to be found. However the third missile was somehow smart enough to move ahead of the rock and then around and hit Artyom straight in the back.

An explosion occured as Artyom was thrown forward into the ground. Sophia quickly shouted his name and dived back to the ground, next to Artyom, Ivy dug back up using her Mech. Sophia landed next to Artyom as he got up, she asked "Ares are you alright?" Artyom replied "My pressure system is destabilised so don't expect me to be swimming deep anymore, plus the back part of My mech is smoking, otherwise everything is up and running." Ivy asked "Will you be able to participate in Combat?" Artyom said "Don't worry Scorpius, I'm more than ready to destroy some Chinese Mechs."

Ivy nodded and said "So Athena, have you created a plan in your head yet?" Sophie nodded and said "While I was up in the air I spotted a parked Carrier Plane on the ground, the Chinese Mechs are 2.3km away from the ship and we will easily be able to catch up with them and stop them, only 5 of the 7 Mechs are able to fight as the last 2 have no visible weapons. I suggest we send Ares to charge at them to distract them while I fly up to one of the Mechs carrying the uranium and disabled it, Scorpius you should dig up to the second mech and disable it as well, from there we can ambush the 5 remaining Mechs and hopefully between the 3 of us we can handle them."

Both Ivy and Artyom agreed and so they started the first phase of the plan. Ivy quickly dug underground and started digging towards the mech carrying the left side of the Uranium platform and Sophia quickly changed her jetpack to 'silent rig' which limited the height that she could fly upto but would ensure her jetpack was as silent as an owl flying at night.

Underneath her, she saw Artyom charge towards the Chinese battalion firing warning shots at them with his Plasma shotgun, as expected the 5 fighter Mechs charged ahead at him leaving the 2 Mechs carrying the uranium behind. These troops are not properly trained Sophia thought they didn't even think about the fact that there were supposed to be 3 Mechs and that it could be a trap. Nevertheless she was glad the troops were inexperienced. She quickly flew towards the mech on the right and retracted her left hand to bring out a circular saw, she silently jumped down onto the 34 foot mech and with swift precision cut it in half. She didn't hurt or kill the pilot of the Mech as it had been forbidden by all 3 alliances to harm the Pilot of a mech.

Sophie quickly got up and saw that to her left the other Chinese Mech had been beaten up into 3 pieces with much more brutality, on top of the broken Mech was Ivy who said "Phase 1 is complete, now come on, we can't leave Ares alone with the 5 mechs, he may be good at battle but even he can't fight off 5 Mechs".

Sophie nodded and took off, flying towards the battle, underneath her she saw Ivy running/crawling (she didn't know what her Mech did while moving fast since it was so weird) towards the battle as well.

Artyom, infact, was keeping the 5 mechs at bay, 2 of them had already been disabled with 2 of them being beheaded (the pilot ejected) and the other being divided into 2 parts. He was using his massive double handed sword, unfortunately Sophie saw the toll it was taking on his Mech, Ares had already taken a huge hit from the missile and was sloppier then usual.

One of the Chinese Mechs quickly jumped over Artyom and landed behind him, he was about to stab him in the back when he suddenly jerked violently before falling to the ground, behind him, Ivy quickly turned off the electric shockers on her pincers and jumped at another Mech.

They clearly have the situation under control, but what about the carrier plane? Thought Sophia, she got her answer a minute later when she heard the engines of the plane ready as it prepared to escape. She quickly signalled to her friends that she was going after the plane and turned of the 'silent rig' of her jetpack to allow her to fly faster and higher. She blasted towards the Plane which had miraculously already taken off. It was a massive plane capable of carrying 20 Mechs at a time so landing on it wouldn't be much of an issue.

Sophie quickly rushed towards the plane and landed at the front of it, she opened her Public Comms and said "This is Athena from Strike Force Theta, land the plane or else I'll be forced to subdue you". She waited for a few minutes, when no reply came she quickly decided to cut off the cockpit of the plane and carry it along with the pilots down to safety while the plane crashed, she retracted her right hand and brought out her circular saw and quickly separated the cockpit, however when she looked inside she saw that the plane was being run by AI, no wonder I didn't get a reply she thought as she dropped the cockpit and let it crash along with the plane. She then flew back to where Ivy and Artyom were.

She arrived back where Ivy and Artyom were only to find Sam and Percy there as well, she landed right next to them just as Artyom concluded explaining what had happened, he ended the conclusion by saying "...and that's why Homing Missiles are annoying".

Everyone shared a small laugh at that then Sophia said "I've taken care of the carrier plane, it was driven by an AI so I destroyed the plane". Percy nodded and said "We reached the power plant and found a high concentration of X-ray radiation bombarded from an air raid, we asked Octavius and he said that apparently these sort of bombs were used in the third world war and had been banned, since our radiation suits wont help with this radiation I suggest we stay as far away as possible from the Plant". Everyone agreed to this as no one wanted a third eye or some other life threatening disease.

Sam then suddenly said "So we can't investigate the mysterious flashing green light?" Sophia asked "What green light?" Sam pointed towards the east of the Plant where there was a mysterious green light flashing from below ground. Percy said "We are most definitely checking that out". Ivy agreed saying "Venator is right, that could be a Chinese base, or something else entirely". Artyom said "I don't know...it seems off somehow, like it's not supposed to be there." Sophia decided to try to use humour and said "Gee, a green light coming out from the ground, why wouldn't it be there?" Everyone gave her a weird stare to which she said "What? I tried to use sarcasm!" Percy sighed and said "Come on team let's check it out".

Sophia took the air to fly above them and give them aerial support if needed and below her the remainder of strike force Theta took out their weapons and started walking towards the mystery light.

Today has shaped out to be a pretty weird day Sophia thought. She reassured herself that it couldn't get any weirder and that she had her team on her side so there was no need to worry.

If only she knew...

[Chinese Mech]