Emiya burst into motion, crawling and monkey-walking through the rubble and tall grass. Contrary to popular belief, crawling was not always a slow form of movement. The key lay in understanding the terrain and how high up you could raise yourself from the ground, using the big muscles in the leg to propel forward and using the hands like stilts, without getting too high up and breaking cover or concealment.
Thus, mapping out a route beforehand was essential to maintaining momentum.
A good side to the high undergrowth was that it offered plenty of concealment, but in exchange, the taller stalks would be disturbed by his passing if he wasn't careful, showing how he moved to anyone on the lookout. while avoiding the taller stalks enough that whatever he did rustle could be mistaken for the wind. He moved methodically and quickly, using short bursts to cover distances and then moving slowly over precarious positions where the undergrowth was just too thick.
Until finally, he came at what he knew was the edge of his suit's sensors; a mere meter further and his radar would start picking out the sniper's signature in the rubble ahead, and vice versa. Nearly a minute had passed since the two shots. The sniper had to be getting antsy by now if he hadn't packed up and run for it already with how quiet everything was.
"Shepard, come in," Emiya called.
"You want me to go?" she asked over the comms.
"On the count of five, go."
"...Got it."
Emiya inhaled, drawing his pistol and getting himself into a position where could stand up.
Two, three, four.
He rose up in one smooth motion to his feet, just high enough that his head and shoulders became visible above the wind-swaying sea of green. Time slowed down; color drained from his vision as he focused. The sights aligned naturally as he relaxed. He couldn't see the sniper from this angle due to a half-collapsed wall, but he could make educated guesses.
Emiya pulled the trigger six times in rapid succession, drawing a line along the sniper's hideout.
Five, six, seven.
Five of the shots were duds for plausibility; only the sixth one mattered. In his mind's eye, the shot punched through the sniper's heads, scattering his brains to the wind, but in reality, they all merely hit the wall with small bursts of rotted wood shrapnel. There was a single muffled crackle of a kinetic barrier and a surprised gasp beyond, indicating the at least one shot drilling through the wall had hit; the sixth shot.
That should have gotten his attention.
He got back down and began to rapidly circle around the sniper's location. But unlike before, he didn't bother with nearly as much effort in keeping the taller reeds from swaying. He was a distraction now.
Ten, eleven, twelve.
"Shepard."
A second of silence.
"Yeah? You okay?" came back her breathy reply.
Emiya smirked.
"Fine. Got him riled up and on my tail now. You see the big house?"
"Yeah?"
"If someone is trying to flank us, they would come that way. Get into cover from both that direction and the sniper's location, and wait half a minute to see if anyone is coming. Engage at will," Emiya spoke rapidly and then went silent, listening to his surroundings anyone's approach.
Nothing. That means no flankers on this side. If anyone is coming, it will be at Shepard's location, like I thought. Doubtful at this point, though.
"Got it. And then?" she asked.
"If no one's there by 30 seconds, run this way and get the sniper from behind. If there were more than this one guy, they would have made themselves known by then. As for the sniper... feel free to go to town on him."
"Heh, you sure know what to give a girl. Copy." Shepard was smirking, he knew it from her tone of voice.
Then again, so was he.
"Over."
"Over."
Emiya took a deep breath and then broke out into a run.
Running straight was bad since it left you open to being shot even as a moving target, but the remains of asphalt here hadn't given away enough for anything to start growing yet and he needed to go forward, even if it was a risk. He could only count on the inexperience of the sniper and his own speed. So it couldn't be helped.
Now.
He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut as another loud boom echoed, the whizz following. Emiya smirked, noting that it was another miss. And given that he hadn't changed weapons to something like an assault rifle meant that he only had a single-shot rifle.
Another boom—whizz, just as useless.
"Sloppy," he remarked as he continued to move along. He stopped, noticing a good rock—one that looked similar enough, anyhow—and grabbing it along as he continued to crawl forward.
Emiya stilled, waiting.
At this point, the sniper had missed so many shots that the pressure must be building up. If there were any other enemies here, he should be expecting some gunfire in the distance soon or Shepard calling in to inform him. Thus he might as well let the sniper stew for a few moments. Emiya calmed himself down but kept his heart beating at an elevated rate. He didn't want to come crashing down in the middle of a fight.
Okay, that was enough.
Can't let him recover his wits, either.
Emiya turned onto his side, judging the weight of the rock with one hand. He decided it should be possible, rearing back the hand and closing his eyes. By now, the shooter must have moved out of the previous firing location. He had been made, so according to textbook, it served better now as a bait for a second offensive from a secondary firing position.
From here Emiya couldn't see the sniper's location over the tall grass—either the previous or the next one—and they were both out of each other's basic sensor ranges. But in his mind's eye, he could still see the location. Assuming a route behind the cover that he couldn't see over, a novice sniper would move there.
He cocked back his hand and then tossed the rock with all his strength. And in its spinning flight, it looked distinctly similar to the flashbang that he had seen tossed at them earlier. Well, only if you glanced at it quickly and had been trained with grenades enough to recognize one.
Which Emiya technically hadn't. But he guessed that this guy had.
It landed with a light thud, skipping twice around the corner of the collapsed house, right into the shadow where the sniper should be hiding.
"Shit!"
Emiya heard the shout in the distance as he got up with his pistol ready. This time, he didn't rise above the swaying plants, merely high enough that his eyes could pierce through the top of the swaying foliage without breaking its silhouette.
Unfortunately, the sniper didn't jump out of cover. He must have realized it was a rock before he made a mistake that big. Or he could have just frozen in place from the surprise; that wasn't entirely uncommon either. But it was enough of a distraction for Emiya to line up his sights.
Four shots in rapid succession.
The reports of the pistol were much quieter in comparison to the sniper rifle, to the point of seeming inconsequential in comparison. But the cracking sound of the debris being kicked up where the sniper was, was anything but; he had aimed at the hard rock on purpose.
He didn't have a clear shot at the guy anyhow and the pistol's power was too low currently to shoot through the wall he had chosen. Sparks were kicked up; small pieces of shattered rock spread everywhere on impact and the sound was like a pickaxe on stone.
Emiya got back down and began to move again; he would flank around while the sniper was busy.
Movement.
Something was thrown out, flying out in the air like a small frisbee. Emiya hesitated for a moment, his eyes tracking the object as he knew for a certainty that he could have shot it, but knowing that if he did it would be too suspicious in the aftermath. So he ran instead. But it wasn't enough as a pulse of something spread out, barely visible as it passed him by.
Instantly his HUD seemed to turn to static and his gun began to beep as if it had overheated.
Emiya didn't hesitate, throwing the gun behind him into the grass as he continued to move. Behind him, the incessant beeping continued as he turned off his HUD and kept moving.
The sniper jumped out of cover, having finally changed his sniper rifle for his pistol as he burst forward at the beeping gun. Some sort of tech-grenade? Miniature EMP, perhaps. Serves dual-purpose of sabotaging my gun as well as revealing my position.
Emiya stayed low, stilling his breath.
The sniper came to a stop as the beeping stopped; the overheating would still prevent the gun from firing for several seconds as it cooled down. The man was wearing completely different gear; it was a half-black, half-green camouflage pattern, with much thicker and robust plates making up the torso and limb pieces.
Medium or heavy armor. The pistol wouldn't have probably worked against it anyhow. Emiya concluded as he began to coil up. As soon as he got a chance; as soon as the sniper showed an opening, Emiya would move.
"Come out! You don't even have a gun anymore, newbie. You're done!" the sniper shouted, sounding something between confident and relieved.
Emiya merely held back a smirk, having felt that a confirmation of his earlier theory regarding who had been hunting them down. The second-timers in these events probably had missions like 'hunt down x amount of recruits'. But the fact that the sniper was facing his general direction also confirmed that the sniper's HUD radar had picked something out in this general location.
That would be a problem. The gun's overheating sounds had distracted him enough for a moment, but now it might not work anymore.
I'll put a voice-playback on my omnitool and throw it over there and then take him down from behind if he falls for it. I can probably joint-lock him and take his gun to finish him off. Otherwise, I'll make a run for it, there's concealment enough for me to keep him guessing at my exact location. Double back for my pistol and try again. Emiya nodded to himself, feeling his heart rate pick up in preparation as the smirk bloomed through on his face.
He was having fun, he distantly realized.
—Pffftzzz, —Pffftzzz, —Pffftzzz.
Three shots rang out unexpectedly from further away.
"Guh, what!" The sniper turned around and Emiya smirked. Nice job, Shepard.
He rushed forward like a loosed arrow, crossing the distance in great big leaps in less than two seconds. His hands shot out and one went to the wrist of the gun as another went to the shoulder in a simple and reliable arm-takedown.
"Ooopphh!" The sniper groaned as he face-planted into the ground with Emiya pressing down on him from above, wresting away the pistol by wrenching against the thumb. He spun around the pistol, placing it directly against the side of the sniper's visor. Much bulkier than mine
"How about we call it here. I'm not sure if the kinetic barrier will work this close, you know," Emiya said.
"Fuck you! It's ID-locked! You can't do shit with it anyway!" was the struggling reply.
Emiya blinked, pulling up the pistol and aiming it at a tree in the distance. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened.
"Huh. Well, I guess we're doing this the hard way then."
"Yeah, what are you gonna do—"
"Shepard, mind coming over and shooting this guy for me?" Emiya asked out loud, and a second later the woman emerged from the bushes with her pistol held up.
She had been holding back from shooting since Emiya had gotten into grappling with her target and made a clear shot difficult. Then again, given that his bulkier hardsuit's kinetic barrier had taken all those shots without a problem a moment ago, she had hesitated for a moment at whether or not her pistol would even be able to punch through before it overheated.
"You can go grab mine if you want to dual wield. It's somewhere over there in the bushes."
"Sure, no problem. Mind if I start with his feet?" she asked with a grin, taking aim.
"Wait, hold on!"
She didn't, shooting 14 shots into his leg and taking a short break to let her guns cool down and then continuing until the sniper's kinetic barrier gave way. She whistled when she finally got a few shots in and saw his leg begin to stiffen after a shot.
"Man, his shields are way better than ours. No fair," she mock-complained, even as she happily continued to work her way up, shooting arm and back while the kinetic barriers were down. Emiya let go and dusted himself as she finished off with his shoulders and torso.
"Think that's enough?" She looked up at Emiya with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
He shrugged with a helpless smile. "Give him two more for good measure. Both arms."
"Can do, Emiya." And she did.
After making sure that the sniper really was 'dead', they finally relaxed.
They raised up the sniper so that he was lying with his back against the ruins he had been hiding inside. He seemed more annoyed and frustrated than anything else, so it seemed like a fine position to leave him in. Even as they asked him questions, the sniper sulked and remained stubbornly quiet.
"Are you alone or do you have any backup nearby?"
The sniper said nothing, but Emiya took the sullen annoyance to mean that he had been alone. If there was backup nearby, a man of this character would have tried to make a racket for the rest of his team or squad to come in and mop them up. Or then start throwing threats like 'you're gonna regret this', or something equally inane.
Emiya took back his pistol from Shepard, testing it one more time just to ascertain that it still worked. With some searching, he also found the spinning disc the sniper had used before and brought it back, ignoring Shepard who had been asked questions and glaring at the mulishly silent sniper.
"What's this?" he asked, holding up the tech grenade.
The sniper averted his eyes, ignoring them completely. Shepard rolled her eyes, kicking at his shin lightly. The sniper merely looked up and glared, mouthing the words 'I'm dead, remember?' with inaudible sass.
Emiya huffed and then searched the sniper's pockets. He found a few more of them but realized that they weren't as simple as the grenades from his time had been. Emiya looked at the sniper, who was studiously pretending to not be paying attention.
Raising up the unused disc-grenade, he asked: "Is this ID-locked... or is it activated with your omnitool?"
The man made a smug little attempt at shaking his head to show that he didn't know what Emiya was talking about, but it merely looked like he was having a seizure for a second as his entire hardsuit had been hardened up to prevent movement.
Perhaps Shepard had been a little bit over-zealous?
Emiya shrugged and put them back into the sniper's pouch. Perhaps they could be used as diversions and maybe if he shot them, something interesting would happen. But assuming that they were usable by anyone who knew the key, for example, the sniper's unit could all probably make them all go off inside his own pouches.
Better to discard unusable and unknown items, he figured.
And then looked at the rectangle attached to the sniper's back on the Van der Waals-strip, realizing it was the collapsed form of the sniper rifle that had been used earlier. Finally, when Emiya took it, did the sniper seem to perk up.
His eyes followed the collapsed form of the sniper rifle like a hawk's.
"Yours, or Navy gear?" Emiya asked with a teasing grin. The sniper twitched. "Borrowed Navy gear, then. But you really like it. No, not it. Her. What's her name? She's a pretty girl. Nice smooth lines, no scratches, and a good polish. I can smell the oil, too. Nothing cheap. You must do maintenance on the regular to keep her in tip-top condition."
Emiya smirked as he ran a hand along the collapsed gun, almost fondling it in front of the sniper.
"Fuck you." The sniper glared at him now, finally opening his mouth. "ID-locked, asshole."
Emiya blinked, before thinking better of that snark he had just almost let loose. But apparently, Shepard had thought it as well and was not above some more petty revenge for the ambush before.
"What, your asshole is ID-locked? Do you need your omnitool to go to the bathroom or something?"
Emiya huffed, not so much at the quip; a bit cruder than he had wanted to say but still got the idea across. He was more amused by the confused and then mortified-with-anger expression of the sniper at her words.
"Well, I'll be taking her for a while," He said, standing up with a grin as he patted the rifle. "I'll be sure to be a real gentleman and to bring her home before midnight."
The sniper was now glaring daggers at them both, seething and obviously trying to all-too-futilely break free. Shepard blinked and then let out a guffaw of laughter as she moved to follow Emiya as he started walking back.
They needed to check up on Cassani and then get moving before someone came to investigate the firefight.
;
At least they had gene mods and hardsuits, Emiya thought as he carried Franco on his shoulders in a fireman carry.
Ahead of him, Shepard was scouting and keeping an eye out. For all her speed and toughness, she couldn't carry their 'wounded' for more than a dozen minutes before she would start slowing down. It was a simple matter of weight difference and natural physique, with their wounded's legs hanging down and getting entangled with everything when she carried him.
Even gene therapy couldn't erase that entirely, since the laws were quite strict regarding anything beyond just 'fixing' stuff.
Which meant that it fell on Emiya's shoulders to carry Franco. Literally.
"Sorry about this, man."
"It's fine. If I had been taken out, I'd expect you to be carrying me around," Emiya said with a slight smirk, even as he felt his thighs burning. They had been going at a doubled pace for an hour now, just to make sure that they didn't get caught up in any other groups that might come to investigate the site of their earlier firefight.
Emiya took another sip of his water bottle as he exhaled hot air.
Luckily the servos locking down to prevent movement only affected the internal movements. As such, it wasn't like carrying a frozen stiff human corpse or anything, which would have been a decidedly awkward affair. Instead, so long as Cassani relaxed, Emiya could move his limbs around just fine. This meant that once they got a good position, Cassani could just tense a little and his body would lock into place which made it easier for Emiya to carry him.
Like a weird backpack, with terrible straps and poor balance, and very heavy. Still, it was better than having to carry him than if he had been completely stiff. Be grateful for the little things, it'll keep you from going insane.
At this rate, they wouldn't make it to the recall point in time he guessed. He had been planning to skirt the edge of the jungle where the terrain was still traversable without having to cut down a dozen plants and hanging vines with each and every step you took, but with a man down it just would not work anymore.
"How about you, any changes?" he asked, looking up again as he continued to walk one step at a time.
"Nah. Still crippled and bleeding out. Got 14 hours in me, still. Apparently, anyhow. My nose itches like a motherfucker, tho." Franco said with a halfhearted grin.
"Well, that's something at least." Emiya allowed. "But this isn't working out."
If they didn't have time constraints, he was certain that he could keep going until his body literally collapsed beneath him. He had done it before and this time he didn't have to worry about being sucked dry by leeches sticking to every limb by the dozen, or about the constant rain beating down on him like it usually did in the jungle. Franco was lighter, too. Or perhaps that too was just the gene therapy making him stronger. He wondered whether it applied to the immune system as well or whether in the long term he would have to worry about diseases and diarrhea again.
Well, it wouldn't matter right now. This exercise would end before that became a problem. He set down Cassani and recovered his strength by sitting down and breathing deeply until his legs stopped aching. Taking a deep swig of the water bottle, he finished it off till the last drop.
"You can have mine, not too thirsty, what with the excellent service." Franco quipped and Emiya nodded his thanks back. He switched out the bottles attaching his own empty one to Cassani's suit and then giving him a quick sip just in case, to keep him hydrated, before taking another deep mouthful.
It wasn't plain water, either. More akin to a light sports drink, really.
Shepard came back, almost tripping over a thick tree root sticking out from the ground as she did. She seemed to have adapted mostly to the new terrain but still seemed hesitant about moving at full speed as always something seemed to entangle or grab at her.
She looked at them, a flash of worry in her eyes as she sat down and took a swig from her own bottle.
"We're gonna have to change our plans a little," Emiya said simply.
"Yeah? Leaving me behind?" Cassani asked with a little bit of false cheer, though the undercurrent of worry was plain to hear.
Maybe Emiya and Shepard would pass with flying colors if they passed him off dead, but that would no doubt sink his grading for the exercise. Though damned through little fault of his own, it would certainly be natural to consider such a conclusion and worry about it.
She certainly had been thinking it, judging by the way she was looking at Cassani at times.
"Yes," Emiya said, just as Shepard had been about to say something. She blinked, turning to look at him with a questioning stare. "We'll acquire a vehicle and pick you up. There's a hill just up ahead that runs next to a road. We can leave you there and keep the comms open; you can act as our watcher for the road while we try to get an ambush set up."
Shepard paused, considering that.
"Yeah? Not gonna just leave me behind, are you?" Cassani asked, sounding a bit more hopeful, trying not to make it sound like a whine.
Emiya simply stared back at him blankly.
He had hauled too many half-dead and dying men around for real, to care about the peace of mind of this entirely healthy, if minorly inconvenienced, one. It was one thing when trying to save a man for real, to keep them from giving up, but he had a hard time bringing himself to care enough about the future prospects of Cassani to do the same here.
And he also knew that tiring himself out by trying to force his way forward would just blow up in all of their faces.
Work smarter, not harder.
"If we can't get you, we can't get you," Emiya said finally, shrugging.
Shepard mirrored his shrug, as Cassani stared at them.
Their 'wounded' stared between them for a few moments, before he affected a shrug as best he could with his 'paralyzed' body.
"Yeah, okay. That's fair."
;
"Alright. Just give me the generals of what you can see and where, if something shows up," Emiya said, patting at Cassani's shoulder.
He, in turn, gave Emiya a flat stare.
"Do I really have to be in a tree?"
"It's safer. No one is going to look up this specific tree, and you can see further. No problems, right?" Emiya said with a smirk.
"Uh-huh, and what if I fall, huh?"
"Well that's simple. Don't," Emiya said as he nodded.
"That's not a—hey!"
Emiya ignored him and jumped down. Getting their cripple up there was a bit of a chore and had taken some time, but he judged that its benefits outweighed that trouble. With their combined gene therapy and rigorous-exercise-granted strength, with Emiya pulling from above and Shepard pushing from below, they had managed to get him up there without too much fuss.
Shepard merely stared up at Cassani in the tree and then down at Emiya, with one eyebrow raised. "I thought you were joking before. Still almost do, even with him up there."
Emiya shrugged with an easy half-smirk. "Let's go."
He didn't wait for her answer as started jogging. He could hear her following and he turned up his pace. She must have been surprised a moment later as he began to move about in a strange pattern, instead of in a straight line, as at times she faltered behind him.
It was natural.
In nature there were no straight lines; you had to take the path of least resistance. Of course, seeing where one could easily walk was a skill all of its own, but one he had cultivated to a degree where terrain of this level was reasonably traversable.
Shepard copied his steps, following behind him at her own pace and he matched her so that they did not get separated.
Of course, this way of moving was quite loud. In the forest, and especially jungles, sound was the largest sign of danger to pay attention to. Not just your own movement, but the sounds of wildlife, too. But it was a relatively short-ranged indicator. With trees growing this thickly around them you couldn't see much past 20 meters, if even that, with sound tapering off into muffled nothingness not much further beyond that at ground level.
Still, as it was, they needed to regain lost time so it couldn't be helped if they made some noise.
Heel-first on hard ground; rolling step. Toes first on soft ground to test it gently, he remembered.
It took a little bit of effort, but soon his gait was the same as after all those years. Well, Shepard behind him made his relative silence a moot point, but it was a good habit to keep cultivated nonetheless.
They made it to the road and he crouched down by a tall tree that gave him plenty of cover to one side. To make the road, trees had been cleared long ago, letting sunlight shine down enough for some plants to grow here and there at the ground level right next to the tracks. This gave him ample concealment, as the waist-high grass and undergrowth were more than enough to hide a man from sight.
Shepard came to a stop behind him, kneeling just behind him. He leaned forward, low and nearly touching the ground as he allowed his head to break through the grass onto the road. He looked left and right, peering as far as he could.
Reaching out a hand to touch the road, he frowned as he felt the composition and depth of the tracks. It had rained during the night and early morning, and the canopy above wouldn't have dispersed the droplets enough to keep from muddying his reading some... But, several cars had passed by here today, judging by the freshness of the tracks.
"Yeah, this will do."
"What is it?" Shepard asked, leaning to look at what he was doing while staying low enough to not break concealment herself.
Emiya leaned back to cover and he looked at Shepard. "Weren't you paying attention? We need a vehicle, right?"
Shepard blinked at him, not at all amused at the grin.
"So we're going to stage an ambush of our own and rob whoever comes driving down this road," Emiya said, feeling entirely too amused by her annoyance.
"And they are simply going to let us—with our plinky little guns—take their military spec car?"
Emiya's grin only widened. The reason crazy schemes like this worked was precisely because they were crazy. "Yeah, after all... We have this."
He reached over his back and pulled away the collapsed sniper rifle from the Van der Waals-strip. Shepard blinked, the realization clear in her eyes. But then she frowned as she realized the biggest snag in that plan.
"It's ID-locked, though. That asshole seemed pretty sure we wouldn't be able to use it."
"Yeah, which is why I messed with him a little. He was obviously some kind of techie-type, what-with his EMP grenades and stuff." Emiya explained.
"'Techie-type'? Is that some technical term I slept the introduction to through to?" she snarked at him, to which he waved his hand as if to dispel her skepticism.
"He seemed pretty focused on a specific part of the gun, right here. I think I can work something out." Emiya grinned.
It was bullshit, of course. But as if that was going to stop him.
"Right, so we take one thing and use it to take another..." She nodded, if a bit flippantly. "It could work, as long as we can keep the momentum going. If they call for help or manage to keep contact, who knows who will be informed about the car getting jacked. And they usually have some kind of transponder or signal, too. That's assuming you can get that thing to work, too," she mused, turning thoughtful.
He huffed as he knew he had her on board already at this point. "Oh, an expert on stealing cars, are we?"
She snapped, turning to look at him straight in the eye with a dead serious look. He merely smirked at her.
"Oh my, naughty naughty," he said with a deliberately playful tone. He had her off-balance, now he needed to hook her in. She licked her lips in a nervous gesture, considering what to say. Should she deny, deny, deny? Play it off? It was obvious he was touching at a part of her past she wasn't very proud of. But before she could say anything, he continued, serious again. "Think you can take care of any trackers? Obvious ones, at least?"
Extend a show of trust, delegate responsibility based on a shared secret. It will build trust without fail.
She blinked at him and then recovered after a second as she realized he was waiting for her answer. He was deliberately looking away from her as if paying attention to their surroundings. She needed to think her momentary pauses went unnoticed, lest she realized he was playing her. Or rather, he thought of it as a courtesy, allowing her to outwardly retain her dignity.
"Yeah. I can try, at least," she said with finality. As long as you drop it here, went unsaid.
"Good." Emiya nodded. "Alright, here's the plan. I'll be busy with this thing, so you need to find a few things..."
;
"How about this one? It's nice and thick. Would stop any car dead in its tracks." Shepard asked over the comms as she patted at a tree trunk in the distance.
"No, too big and we'll be cutting off the road for ourselves. It needs to have enough leaves and volume to make them panic as it falls in front of them, but not so much as to cause a real issue when we need the road again. Besides, you're gonna have to cut it with your pistol, so think about how wide the trunk is," Emiya replied, only glancing up from his work.
He had taken a wide plant leaf, easily the size of a spread-out newspaper, and begun to dismantle his pistol on top of it alongside the rifle. Normally, it was a terrible idea to spread small parts like these next to each other, when they were so easy to mix up. But he could recognize both guns' pieces by sight alone any day.
"Won't they just drive through it, then?"
"Which is why we're doing this here on the bend." He pointed at the road for her to see. "The corner means that they'll probably drive into the ditch if they try to keep going through it without seeing the road and if they open fire we have enough concealment to slip away and try again, either on them the moment they get the car out of the ditch, or then somewhere else on something different."
"Huh. Well, I guess." Shepard shrugged and resumed her search.
"Heads up, a building just fucking collapsed in the north of town. Looked like it exploded and then just fell apart." Cassani's voice broke into the comm-line.
Emiya frowned, making note of that and considering whether it was internal demolition or a stray shot or explosive. Difficult to tell, but would be good to know regardless. He replied absently: "Copy."
After that, he continued to take apart the two weapons while keeping one eye on the road. Shepard walked around, both left and right alongside the road on either side, straying further and further as she looked for a suitable tree.
As he got to the ammunition block in the sniper rifle, he looked at it curiously. There was some sort of text marked on it, proclaiming 'Dummy PHASIC ROUNDS rating II – for field exercise use only!' with large yellow and black letters. He didn't know what that first part meant, so he shrugged and kept going.
At one point, before they were ready, a car came driving by the road and they both scrambled for cover. Some sort of six-wheeled and heavily-reinforced combat vehicle, though it lacked outer guns. As it seemed to be full of hardsuited figures, promising heavy opposition, they wouldn't have ambushed it even if everything was in place. So they both remained low and silent, hoping that they would not be picked up by any of their sensors.
As radar was beginning to be a problem, Shepard had asked earlier if he had any ideas about hiding from those.
Emiya had been thinking the same, and so tried out some things based on what he knew of the sensors' functions, and after some experimentation, he found a trick.
They both turned off their hardsuits as the car drove past, though the bootup sequence would mean that they would be completely vulnerable if it came down to a firefight. Still, given the difference in numbers and equipment, it wouldn't have mattered either way as he had reasoned, and she had hesitantly agreed. He had found that functionality after reading through the hardsuit's manual and doing some digging through the manufacturer's extranet databases and manuals for various models of advanced sensor suites. The military line was apparently a little bit different with several proprietary technologies, but the basics remained the same.
Of course, given that this essentially meant that their kinetic barriers would not work at all, he was fairly certain he was skirting some rules here. It meant that their suits would not detect any shots—possibly rendering them invulnerable in a sense—and leaving them only to rely on the armor and built-in healing suites—rendering them utterly vulnerable in practice.
Well, the armor would still keep them alive from most shots, so it wasn't all bad.
But seeing as how no one had explicitly denied them from using this function and the rules and regulations available to him did not mention such a scenario, he had simply decided to rather ask for forgiveness than for permission if it became an issue.
After all, it wasn't as if they had taken off their suits, right?
As the car drove by them without stopping or slowing down, they both let out a breath of relief. Both at the confirmation of the ploy working, and of not having to contend with a carful of heavily armed enemies.
"Seems like the sensors rely primarily on electromagnetic radiation bleeding from our gear, rather than some sort of life signs..." Emiya muttered to himself. It made sense, as the sensitivity required for the latter would cause such sensors to pick up on anything and everything in this dense environment. Too much information can be just as bad as too little, quite similarly to what a flashbang did to your eyes.
After that, Shepard seemed to be doubly intent on finding a good tree for their use and another fifteen minutes later she returned to where he was working. Without proper tools, he had to adapt a little; using the edge of a cover as a screwdriver, a pair of dry twigs as chopsticks in place of tweezers, and such-like.
Nothing he hadn't had to do before.
He once sutured a man in the field with a fishbone and his wife's hair. Kept him from bleeding out, but the infection that followed kept him bedridden for a long while.
"Are you sure about what you're doing? Wouldn't it be better to just use the guns we know we have?" She asked, looming over his shoulder. "I think we could make it work if we stop their car and then drop another big tree on them. Pick them off from cover."
"No. The pistols just don't have enough power to work. We need more to even the scales."
"Hmm... Well, if you say so. I found two trees that could work, if I climb up and entangle their tops with some rope or vine. One will pull the other down with it at an angle where they fall right on the road, crossing over each other." Shepard said, shrugging.
Emiya looked up, considering it for a moment.
"Sounds good. Do you need any help?"
"Nah, just need to get some vine from back there. But you think it will work?" Shepard asked.
"Don't see why not." He shrugged and then turned back to his work.
The basic idea was to hook up his pistol's computer to the sniper rifle's computer so that it functioned as the basic firing mechanism while overriding the issue of the ID-lock. Of course, he had already figured out three potential ways of doing it, but by now had been forced to discard two of them.
Apparently, he wasn't the only one who had ever had this idea and the built-in failsafes reflected that, using probably serialized parts that wouldn't work except together. But, he more than anyone else understood weapons. That, at least if nothing else, he could declare with pride. His life might have been that of an empty sham, who only blindly stumbled along his path, and had never even thought to think through it for himself as it led him straight to the gallows...
But at least that much was real: he knew weapons.
How and why they were made; how they functioned as systems, symbols, and tools; how they could be repaired and broken; how they could be made to do whatever you needed...
So, with a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking and some crossed wires, he felt he had something he could work with here. He smiled a little, though noting that the pistol hanging from the side of the rifle made it rather cumbersome to carry and aim in any position other than the prone.
But that was fine; he could take some distance and pick them off at a range. It was a sniper rifle, after all.
"Now, just to test this out..." he said, dialing the power manually to a minimum to keep the sound as low as possible. He aimed at a tree in the distance, standing against a hill. The odds of hitting anyone would be astronomical with that, and with the thick growth of trees and plants around him, the sound would be relatively muffled.
His heartbeat slightly rose, as his finger found the trigger. The moment of truth.
He pulled—boom!
Emiya grinned, laughing lightly as he admired the gun and noting the recoil and line of fire. With his pistol's computer as the go-between, the auto-aim function could not be used, as the pistol's auto-aim was not calibrated for the sniper rifle's output. Thus, it could only use the simple 'eyeballing' aiming mode. But that was completely fine, he could more than handle it.
Nearly all of his experience was with 'dumb weapons' of 'old', anyway. But then he realized the problem.
"Damn," he cursed softly. The tree he had shot had been gouged through by his sniper rifle. The safety program doesn't work; it's working at full power.
He couldn't use this, not in the exercise at least. It would kill someone as it punched right through their kinetic barriers.
"What was that?" Shepard asked over the comms, distracting Emiya from his frustrations.
"Got it working, but ran into another issue. Any problems on your end?"
"You did...? And, uh, no. Fine on this end. Had to be careful with the second tree, needed to shoot out enough of it to make it fall with the other, but still leave enough to keep it steady until then."
"Good. We'll hammer out the final details of the plan, so get back when you can, out." Emiya responded and then turned back to his cobbled-together sniper rifle. "Damn. Really hadn't thought of that."
He disassembled it and reassembled his pistol and tried it out, noting that the firmware was still in effect, which was something of a relief at least. Soon enough, Shepard returned and sat down next to him, watching as he continued to try and figure it out.
"You really like guns, huh..." she said with a strange expression, causing Emiya to completely pause and look up at her blankly.
"What?"
"You always look like you're having fun when you're working on them," she continued, giving him a half-smile.
"No, I just—we need this thing to work, so..." He denied weakly, before trailing off as he frowned at himself.
Shepard merely looked at him curiously, as if analyzing a strange animal. He shook his head, turning back to the inert rifle. It worked just fine when cobbled together. Too fine, as he had already noted. He sighed again, crossing his arms.
"So what's the problem?"
Emiya looked up again, still frowning.
"It's a matter of the firmware. The basic system still works, but it's different between the two guns, so the adjustments like auto-aim and the power adjustment don't work. The mass effect calculations and firing block shaver still function, which means it works. But since the capacitors and rails are bigger the power scales up accordingly, using the... factory settings, I suppose. The calculations and adjustments are probably done through a mainframe using our omnitools as a go-between."
"Uh-huh." Shepard nodded at him with a look.
"It's too powerful."
"Ah... So if you wanted to shoot through a car engine, it would be fine, but shoot at a guy and he'll get killed? Assuming you could even hit either."
"Pretty much. And I could. The problem lies in the software, which would require hacking. But I don't have any clues about how to go about that, especially since I would have to hack through the Systems Alliance's firewalls..." Emiya nodded.
They sat there in silence, as he continued to stare at the guns with mounting annoyance.
"So are you going to apply for some Infiltrator-related line? You seem pretty good at all this," she asked, nodding at the guns and at the forest around them.
Emiya blinked again, his line-of-thought about trying to re-calibrate the entire system from the ground up after frying some of the internal sensors getting cut short.
"Well... Something like that," he admitted.
General engineering did technically allow one to apply for Infiltrator training, but the parallels were so minor you would have to re-train yourself pretty much from the ground up afterward anyhow. He was simply going to Mars, nothing after that.
"You always seem so sure of yourself. I'm still not sure what I want. About anything, really," Shepard admitted quietly, absently looking at the ground. "I mean, I'm only good with a gun and when I'm running around without enough time to think too much."
Emiya looked up, forgetting about the guns for a moment.
"And the only line that's not just the bottom-of-the-barrel, lick-the-dirt-off-my-shoes grunt marines that has that is the N-line Soldier, and I don't have the grades to get there." She sighed, shaking her head. "Well, maybe it would be fine to just spend a few years on some spaceship until I'm done with the enlistment contract, but I don't think I would really get anything out of it."
Emiya looked at her, hesitating for a moment at what to say.
He wanted to tell himself that he had nothing to say on the matter, yet somewhere in his gut, an opinion seemed to be clawing its way out nonetheless.
"N-line Soldier, huh?" He considered it.
She had the right attitude; she would have fit right in with some of the special forces guys he had run into in his life, as he had noted several times before. That bordering-on-sociopathic mania when in the thick of things—the wicked grin she would sport while bullets flew all around her and she had a gun in her hand—along with the complete lack of close friends or family outside the service.
But the N-line seemed to be more than just a wetworks hellhole he had feared she would get funneled into. They were idols, of a sort. Leaders and icons. The image of Shepard in the N7 pattern armor that he had seen in the propaganda reels ran through his mind for just a second.
"Y-yeah... It was a silly id—"
"I think you would do great," he said voicing his honest assessment, going back to putting back together the sniper rifle with the pistol attached to it.
He had something of an idea, that might just work.
"Really?" she asked, looking at him astonished.
He nodded, not bothering to look up. She would either believe him or she wouldn't; it wasn't his job to convince her. Neither said anything after that for several minutes, until Emiya had the botched-together sniper rifle ready again.
"Emiya, can I ask you for a favor? A really big one."
"Hmm?" He looked up at her. She seemed serious. Resolved, even. That was good, he thought. For some reason.
"I don't have the grades to get into the N-line. My written tests went... you know. But if I did well here... Now, if I—we did a lot of side objectives, I think I might be able to qualify for the N-line anyway."
Emiya considered her words, holding her tentative gaze for a long moment.
"...Let's get the car first and I'll see what we can do."
"You got it." She nodded at him, clenching her fist out of his sight. She didn't sound like she entirely believed him, thinking he was only reassuring her, the same way he had tried with Cassani.
He grunted, already thinking of just ignoring the request, only to get annoyed with himself for the thought, and then took a deep breath.
"But first, let's see if I can make this work."
She blinked. "You got it fixed?"
"Nope. But I'm gonna call tech support and see what they have to say about it," he answered with a growing smirk.