>>6340695You ease the Zaku backward, letting the tall trees swallow your silhouette. The commander unit is still too far, while the standard unit on your left flank is pushing faster. You can't see it, but you can see its mono-eye slicing the undergrowth if you look at your monitors hard enough.
You exhale, and steady the right handbar. You then throttle down and take a knee to better control your fire. The whole mobile suit groans under its own weight, trembling once before the gyros catch up.
Enari’s voice comes through faintly:
“…stabilize, Lieutenant. Short bursts. Don’t anticipate recoil. Compensate.”
You lock the Machine Gun into place, pressed against the Zaku's right arm while its left grips the gun's handlebar for better stability. <span class="mu-i"> This is it** </span>, you think to yourself as you draw in a breath so deep your ribs ache. Leaves shiver. Something metal shifts behind the brush.
<span class="mu-i"> <span class="mu-s"> There! </span> </span>
A Zaku steps through the break in the trees, just enough to show knee, lower thigh, and the lip of its machine gun. It doesn’t see you. Not yet. You squeeze the trigger, and the machine gun roars. The Zaku’s arm rattles like a jackhammer as bullets lace across the clearing.
Your aim is almost good.. Almost.
Your shots chew through bark, dirt, a tree trunk that explodes in splinters, before just scraping the side of the Zaku’s leg armor. You see the impact. You see the chance. But, it slipped away. The recoil slams harder than expected, the highly tuned actuators overcorrecting against your inexperienced inputs. Your second burst goes wide, and you mutter a curse under your breath.
The Zaku freezes mid-step.. Then its mono-eye snaps toward you with predatory clarity. It knows exactly where you are now.
Enari's voice breaks through the static, sharp:
“Lieutenant! you’ve been made! Get out of there, now!”
The Zaku lifts its machine gun, and you quickly jerk the controls and pedals to cover yourself with your Zaku's shoulder shield. Old-growth trees explode around you. Rounds hammer against Unit 01’s shoulder shield, some bullets slipping past and hitting torso plating, rattling your teeth through the cockpit frame as the world feels like it's shaking violently around you.
A warning light flares, and text appears on your main monitor- <span class="mu-s"> IMPACT DETECTED: CHEST ARMOR. </span> No breach, but too damn close.
Several other text boxes which report the Zaku's current condition pop up across the monitors, but you ignore them as you race to get the fuck out of your position. The Zaku fires again, cutting down everything between you and it. You push the pedals, a beat too hard, too fast; The ace-tuned OS lunges, and Unit 01 jerks sideways instead of backward. The incoming machine gun burst rips through the ground exactly where you were kneeling a second earlier, shredding foliage and kicking up a geyser of dirt.
