The Gustav trundled to a stop in the middle of the desert, and Blaine glanced around. The place looked pretty standard for a desert, but there were a few rocky spires that could prove to sway the battle. Considering that they were at least fifty meters tall, they could potentially be good cover. Also, he noticed with satisfaction, the sand in this part of the desert was flinty and a lot more able to support the weight of a Zoid than the last time he'd battled in the desert.

"Yo! Boss, can we unload now?" called John impatiently from his Stealth Viper. Blaine thumbed the comm, still looking for the other team the entire time.

"Sure go ahead. And make sure all the modifications are equipped properly... "

A second voice cut in at this comment, sighing quietly.

"Yes Daddy. We will. Gordos, mobilize!" called Nat as her Godos, equipped with the Ontos guns, clomped off the trailer and onto the desert ground. The Gordos was soon followed by Matthew's Red Horn, whcih was bearing an odd frame mounted with quite a few guns, not to mention the Attack Booster pods on the hips of the Horn. The last Zoid to leave the Gustav trailers was a shiny new Stealth Viper, specially equipped with two long, triple barrelled rifles in place of the normal machine guns. It slithered around in front of the other two Zoids, and waited patiently.

((Repairage done, 'ere I come!))

Liam scowled at the readout on his Gun Sniper's display regarding enemy firepower. That was a LOT of guns. He hated facing lots of guns, and this Team Vagrant had them in spades. A Gordos like Hank's, a Red Horn with a frelling Wild Weasel unit and... a Stealth Viper. It kind of stood out in the middle of the two huge gun-laden beasts, but Liam knew better than to underestimate it.

Oh, well. They'd just have to see about cutting down the volume of fire to a more managable size.

"Orders, boss?" Jan trundled up in the DiBison.

"Watch your mortar array," Liam instructed him. "I don't think they're packing anything high-penetration enough to hit the ammo supply, but you never know. Tamar, have fun tankbusting and try to stay alive -- we could really use your mobility in this one."

"Roger that!" Tamar replied cheerfully. As usual, she was cavorting at the edge of the flight deck.

Liam flexed his hands around the controls and took a deep breath, waiting for the arrival of the judge so that the killmaim could commence.

Like a bullet, the Judge Capsule rocketed down. Aimed at Tamar, it apparently found great glee in playing chicken.
Unfortunately, someone back in HQ was paying attention. The Capsule veered off, landing in the middle of the field. It deployed, revealing the familiar Judgeman.
His serial number was 0042.
"This MMU is the battle between Team Vagrant," the Judgeman raised the green paddle, "and Team Reaper's Bounty. The battlemode is zero-niner-niner-two. The terrain is a level open field. The surrounding area within thirty kilometers has been designated off-limits. This means you, Jimmy and James McDougal. Get off McPhearson's property and quit cow-tipping.
" . . .
"Well, at least the bull seemed to have fun. Anyways. Y'all know the drill. Slug it out 'til one side stops moving."

As ever, Tamar needed no encouragement.

In fact, if possible, she needed LESS. Much less.

"Here we go!" she whooped, nosing over slightly to bring her reticule over the Red Horn. Coasting in at a relatively sedate speed of about five hundred kph, Tamar triggered a continuous stream of superheated plasma. Although she wasn't too discriminate about where she aimed on the Red Horn's back-mounted WWU, she did pay special attention to the missile racks, cooking off the ammo and exploding any armed warheads with the intense searing heat. Either way, putting a bunch of guns out of commission and blowing up some missiles would be a lovely thing.

She kept up the attack run as long as the doubtless-boosting Horn was still in front of her, then jammed the throttle forwards and pulled up into a three-quarters loop, doing a half-roll near the apex so that at the end she was straight, level and hopefully pointed right at the rear of the Horn, at which point she once more commenced plasma burnination as time permitted.

---

Once more, Jan's DiBison was lined up against a Gordos. This time, however, the game plan was slightly different. Seeing no sense in holding back, he punched the big red button on the console labeled in permenant marker HURT SOMETHING BADLY. That's right, folks, it's Focused Megalo-Max time. The DiBison braced itself against incoming fire as the cannons achieved a positive lock on the slow-moving Gordos. An escalating whine came from the internals of the DiBison as the attack charged...

...and then it unleashed. Seventeen beams of pure heat and light converged into one a moment before it smote the right foreleg of the Gordos like an angry god. As soon as the beam sheared through that leg Jan swept it to the hind leg on the right side, looking for a similar result, all the while careful not to bring the intense cutting beam too close to the Gordos' cockpit or suchlike. Even better, since the beam was mostly aimed at the legs and the surrounding ground, the sand vitrified into molten glass, hopefully trapping the Gordos like a fly in amber once the strike finished.

---

It was much easier the second time, Liam decided as he put the Gun Sniper into Longshot mode. Now there was no hesitation, only eagerness to get on with the battle. As soon as he finished, he dropped the reticule over the Red Horn, searching for targets...

...and he found them. He pumped as many sniper rounds as he could get off during the turn into the most available shoulder joint on the Red Horn, looking to cripple its maneuverability for the takedown. Liam knew that the Stealth Viper would probably be all over him in a few more seconds, so he focused on dealing as much hurt to the highly visible and easily-shot targets as possible.

"Shit."

That was all Matthew could think of to say when he saw the Redler rushing towards him. Reacting instantly, Matthew flipped one of the Attack Boosters forwards and the other backwards, firing them at full burst, to allow him to make a quick 90 degree turn to his right. Matt was certain that although the Redler was an agile aerial Zoid, no aerial Zoid could have as tight a turning circle as a ground Zoid, so it would get him out of the range of fire. Well... he was 90% sure. Probably more like 70% actually.

As Matthew charged to his right, he rotated the WWU to face the Redler, raised the Rectennae Dish and began to lock the missiles. Since he had 64 missiles available to him, he decided he'd split the missiles into sets of 16. 16 for the Redler, 16 for the Gun Sniper, and 32 for the Dibison. Once they were locked, he fired the missiles away, hoping to see burny doom very soon.

As Matthew was seeking to get a lock, he occasionally stopped and fired his boosters in the same manner, allowing him to do quick turns to get out of the line of fire of the Redler. As an after thought, he occasionally fired all the rear-facing 20mm cannons, not really thinking they would hit the Redler.

------------------------------------

Natalie was already facing the Dibison at the start of the battle, and she immediately flipped a few switches, turning the GPS Magnetic Detector on and broadcasting it to all her teammates. She then lined up the 105mm Railguns with the unarmoured hips of the Dibison, and let screaming kinetic projectiles tear through them. The idea was simple. Unbalance the Dibison, so the Megalo-Maxx would miss. And if it didn't, hope you survive. Just to help remove this possibility, Nat also aligned the Ontos clusters at the same unarmoured hips she was shooting, and at the same time as the Railguns fired, she pumped 6 106mm cannon shells into those poor unarmoured hips.

After all her big weapons had been fired, Nat simply aligned her little guns to fire upon the terribly damaged legs of the Dibison, laughing maniaclly.

------------------------------

As soon as the fight began, John slithered towards the Gun Sniper, fully intending to take it out. He began to pepper the Gun Sniper with fire from the Vulcan, knowing this would be little more than a distraction. However, as soon as the Sniper moved into Longshot Mode, which John was sure it would do, he began to fire the Gauss Gatling Units at the now defenseless legs, firing one round a second into the less armoured knee joints of each leg of the Sniper. To do this, he stopped moving, allowing better accuracy. Just for fun, while he was doing this, John also decided to try and lock the Surface-to-Air missiles onto the Redler, and fired them off when they were locked.

Tamar's Redler buzzed the Red Horn for a brief couple of seconds, looping back over the other Vagrants before coming in for a second pass. She ate missile.
The Red Horn blasted missiles out in prodigous quantity, letting out the first wave with one box keyed towards the Redler, the other keyed towards the Gunny. The missiles streaked after Tamar, forcing her into tight evasive maneuvers to avoid her zoid being demolished. Racing off, her Redler and the missiles' contrails wove a complicated and strangely hypnotic pattern in the sky. She flashed the plasma lances at them every time she doubled back, smoking a handful of missiles. She lost a few more, sending them careening out with lost locks, but seven missiles still hit her Redler's tail and wing joints.
While Tamar busied herself avoiding the missiles, the Gunsniper simply set down, weathered the blasts, and plugged shots into the Red Horn's shoulders. A task normally difficult, Liam found his job surprisingly easy when the Horn turned its flank towards him. He managed to deliver a few rounds into the shoulder joint. Unfortunately for him, those missiles had sent his damage sensors squealing.
The DiBison hit the Gordos like the fist of an angry God. Ignoring the rounds tearing into its heavily-armored shoulders, it sent forth a weapon only a shade or two lower than the CPG in raw damage-dealing potential. The plasma splashed under the Gordos, reflecting off the ground and bouncing back up through the zoid. The exposed structure withered away, leaving the zoid so severely damaged that a lesser machine would have CSFed then and there.
The Gordos simply pulled out of the half-melted sand underneath it, its rotted legs straining to move its bulk to safety.
The Stealth Viper discovered that it was in the path of this beam. John was clearly not amused to discover that about half of his zoid was simply gone.
As meager retaliation for this awe-inspiring attack, the Red Horn released thirty-two missiles and a storm of beam cannon shots into the DiBison. The big bruiser took it and looked ready to give some more.

Damage and Positions:
Tamar - Incapable of maintaining flight speeds for much longer; the port engine is reading as dead, the starboard as half-power. The port plasma lance emitter is alo reporting damage, though it might still function. She's about eight hundred meters away from the Gordos.
Liam - In longshot and darn near dead. Rocket boosters and missile pods are reading as dead.
Jan - Damage unknown. Position unchanged.
John - CSF.
Matthew - Damage unknown. About a hundred meters from the Gordos, four hundred meters from the DiBison and nine hundred and fifty meters from the Redler.
Natalie - Systems on the tail aren't reporting, damage indicators in the legs' structure report that she canna take much more o' this, Cap'n! and she's about thirty meters from her starting point.
And she's pissed.

Rank Adjustment:
Jan Yaylor - +1 Win
John Shirran - +1 Loss

"Shi... iiiiit...." moaned Nat, rubbing her head. She'd been shaken around pretty badly, but luckily hadn't been injured. She would have hated anything to mar her good looks. Grasping the controls for the Gordos, Nat began to lumber forward, unaware of how much damage her legs had just taken. She kept turning to keep in line with the Dibison, and when she was ready, she fired two railgun rounds and anther tight cluster of 6 106mm shots into one leg of the Gordos.

---------------------------

Matt groaned as his Red Horn shook slightly from the sniper rounds that were pumped into him. Making an executive decision, Matthew turned his Red Horn towards the Dibison and barrelled towards it, Crasher Horn lowered. At the same time he rotateed the WWU to lay a continuing fire against the Gun Sniper until it was out of commission. Once that was taken care of, the WWU rotated to fire its nasty beams into whatever part of the Dibison was available. The entire time the ABU was blazing away, merrily propelling Matthew along his way. Matthew knew that unless the Dibison moved towards him, he wouldn't reach it in time, but he prepared himself to plunge his horn into any tender and legal part of the Dibison he could.

---------------------------

John sat grumpily in his Stealth Viper. Some debut he'd just made... He punched the control board angrily and then yelped in pain, and began to suck on his knuckles.

"Blaugh!" Tamar muttered, shaking her head. "Missiles! What a wimpy way to fight..."

She burned in low, coming in behind the Red Horn until her distance meter read about 350 meters, always alert to cut out the drive in case of critical malfunction. She flared the airbrakes, slowing until the Redler at last came down with all four paws running on the ground, seeking to catch up to the Red Horn.

Tamar dropped her targeting reticule over the leg joints, aming for the damaged ones whenever possible, firing the Plasma Lances as continuously as possible to burn through the metal joints. She didn't bother with evasion, confident that a damaged flyer would rate very low on target priority.

---

That's not good, Liam thought as he scanned the damage readouts. The missiles had done a LOT. Fortunately, he was still active... for the time being.

Liam immediately leaped out of longshot mode, bounding away from Jan's DiBison, hoping to keep the Red Horn's attention on him for as long as his Zoid would last. The Gun Sniper locked its missile pods and fired them all, also firing the wrist cannons and 80mm whenever a shot presented itself. Mostly, he concentrated on leaping, dodging and firing off a nice volume of weapons to keep the Horn's attention away from his teammates.

---


A smile came to Jan's face as he saw the damage done to the Gordos. "You got some fight left in you yet, old girl," he murmured to Old Reliable as he set about capitalizing on last turn's gains.

Immediately the mortar array elevated, firing all of the central tubes in the array at once in a furious barrage of explody death at the all-but-immobile Gordos, making sure to lead it for any meager movement that it could summon up. As soon as the mortars were away, Jan turned his attention to the Red Horn. Bringing the DiBison up to its maximum safe running speed, always mindful of any hip damage, the big Zoid's mortar array declined to track the closer Red Horn, firing all remaining mortars underneath it to catch it in some absolutely NASTY splash. As distance allowed, the DiBison lowered its head and attempted to smash into the Horn's flank, AZ208mm Impact Cannon blazing nonstop. With luck, the tremendous impact combined with the stress to the big tank's legs would snap them off and give Reaper's Bounty the win.

The Red Horn was the center of the fight for a brief time, charging straight ahead as it trained its fire on the Gunny. Strangely like a tank Patton would have cheered to see, it managed a fairly good accuracy rate.
Except for the fact that the bouncy li'l ninjazoid was running and bouncing around like a maniacal little ninja. Sue me. I'm being lazy with my metaphors right now.
Luna said something about 'Teenage Mutant Ninjazoids.' It could be worse.
*Coughs* Anyways . . . Tamar to the rescue. Coming down in a glide path, she aimed for the Red Horn.
Liam goggled when the Red Horn suddenly went up in flames, much larger than the DiBison's assault would indicate. Tamar's communications screen went blank, lost in static.
Not skipping a beat, Jan aimed for the Gordos. The cannons ripped into the DiBison's shoulders, almost blowing limbs off. Returning fire, the DiBison shattered the Gordos's spine, removing legs in a rain of fire.

The Judgeman deactivated all of the zoids, calling the match a victory for Team Reaper's Bounty. Tamar was found some fifty-eight meters away from the blast, having had the quick reflexes to push the ejector button of d00m.

Total Rank Adjustment:
Reaper's Bounty - +1 Win
Tamar - +1 Win, +1 Loss. Kamekaze bitch.
Jan Yaylor - +2 Win
Team Vagrant - +1 Loss
Matt - +1 Loss
Natalie - +1 Loss
John - +1 Loss

Repairs:
Redler - Well, the good news is that they recovered the zoid's core. The bad news is . . . well, that's about all they could recover. That's a whole new level of damage, m'friend, and you're looking at a total rebuild of the zoid. Speak to me about how much that will cost.
DiBison - Heavy repairs.
Gunsniper - Heavy repairs.
Red Horn - Overhaul. It's only intact enough for that because it's so much larger than the Redler.
Gordos - Overhaul. Missing limbs will do that for ya.
Stealth Viper - Overhaul. You people need to cut down on the cocaine. Your zoids especially.

Each pilot receives 2,200 credits for participating in this MMU.