Rain Vs. Joshua

[encore]

Rain's Modified Hellion stood and faced toward the opposite gate, Rain staying silent as he awaited his enemy.

[dudewheresmygundam]

Joshua entered the Arena fashionably late, apologizing profusely as he did so. Fanton prepared, he glanced at the opposing Hellion, wondering what it could do.

Lacking appropriate information, he just silently acquired a target lock with his cannon - then waited for his enemy to respond without intending to actually fire.

[encore]

Rain let out a long sigh in his cockpit, then flipped a few switches. In moments Rain's shoulder-mounted cannons began to fire at Josh's Fanton's cockpit, and Rain raised his pistol, prepared to fire. Rain gripped the sidestick-controller to his left and let his machine-gun shield spin up, as he raised the weapon and aimed towards the enemy's own cannon.

[dudewheresmygundam]

Joshua took fairly quick notice of the Hellion's aggressive response. Only now did his lackluster maneuvering from the initial move reveal its reasoning: Joshua did not let the target lock expire as his Fanton lurched sideways; the cannons weight naturally causing it to drift downwards; letting the machine gun barrage aimed for his cannon pink off the head torso plate while the cannon fire was evaded to the side.

Granted - by 'evade' one means 'the damn beam passed so close to the right arm that armor began to ablate in a nice, straight orange scar across the limb' but hey - Joshua was still alive to respond. As the lock drifted downwards it acquired a firing solution on the right leg of the enemy Hellion Joshua fired. The single cannon round aim being true due to similar minimal evasive maneuvering coming from his opponent.

Noting the Hellion was aiming its pistol, and choosing to ignore it, Joshua got the Fanton's thrusters engaged as it moved to close distance. Its Fanton lance held ready, Joshua held onto his seat as he rocketed forward towards the Hellion, hoping to close before it could back away and engage in melee.

[encore]

As soon as Joshua had taken action Rain's mobile suit began to run, veering slightly to the right, but towards Joshua's Mobile Suit all the same. The cannon's shots had hit their mark, but that didn't stop Rain. However, the shots did take some speed out of Rain's step, along with leaving a gash visible in the lower region of his leg. The run had slowed as it became more of a quick limp. As Joshua neared Rain's mobile suit Rain strafed to the left and fired with his own head-mounted Vulcan cannons, along with firing his pistol at the opponent's cockpit. He continued to unload his machine-gun-shield's ammo, aiming still towards the enemy's cannon.

[dudewheresmygundam]

Well, Joshua figured his maneuver worked mostly as intended. The leg damage slowed down the Hellion enough to give his Fanton a shot at keeping this fight close. Lacking his bits - melee combat was pretty much the name of the game. Joshua wasn't the best at it; but he knew the basics. Get close, use your range, and control the initiative. Then, kill the bastard. As he closed on the Hellion, this almost happened. But then of course, something went wrong.

The Hellion was firing, and striking - but more importantly it was slipping around to the side of the Fanton. However there was nothing in that Joshua found particularly upsetting. He was able to slow down the Hellion enough to get into melee range, and so he let the extra armor plating of his Fanton absorb the damage aimed his way while he brought up the Fanton lance and pivoted the torso. The arm's position in this maneuver made the limbs an improvised set of shields for the cannon - absorbing the burst aimed for the cannon.

The vulcan/pistol combo struck the armor all over the torso and damaging the thrusters. But those thrusters served their purpose as the Fanton's torso twisted and its lance swept up from the side to slice at the Hellion's damaged leg with all the force it could muster as it advanced. The lance was a rather hefty melee weapon - if it connected, amputation of the leg at the knee was likely. Either way, if Rain managed to slip away from the lance, somehow, Joshua was prepared to fire the cannon again.

He had lots of armor to burn through before the Hellion could do him any true harm - as long he didn't get hit by that shoulder beam cannon.

[encore]

"Charge at 53%."

In a short while his cannons would be ready. Perfect. He had managed to damage his enemy pretty well, but the finishing blow was soon to come. Then Joshua had made his move. As soon as his Mobile Suit had twisted Rain's had pivoted back on it's left leg in defence, swerving 450 degrees and ending up just to the right of Joshua's back. This was his chance, just stay behind Joshua and let him find out what happens when you mess with Rain Holiday.

His Mobile Suit began to jog backwards, pushing hard with its left foot to make up for the right's deteriorating ability to run.

[dudewheresmygundam]

Unfortunately, as the Hellion cleared some distance between them, Joshua's only reaction was to smile. Sure, he was disappointed in his inability to slice off the Hellion's leg - but its backwards jogging gave him a very similar opportunity. Though it wasn't particularly hard to jog backwards - it was significantly harder to control your lean on a bad foot. Additionally - it was really hard to keep your footing if you're pushed from the front while moving backwards.

An audible click was heard in the arena as the Fanton's smoothbore cannon loaded a new shell out of the magazine while running after the Hellion. The running motion would have made it darn hard to strike the Hellion directly - but Joshua wasn't aiming for the enemy suit. Oh, no - he was aiming for the dirt at its feet. Specifically, the favored left foot. The idea was to hit the ground, hard, and create a big enough shock wave that it would knock the Hellion off-balance and drop it to its knees.

Whether this worked or not, the Fanton rapidly broke off its charge just outside of melee range, beginning an easy circling maneuver around the Hellion in an effort to make it difficult for the Hellion to effectively bring its shoulder-mounted cannon to bear on it before the Fanton could fire off a smooth bore shot of its own.

[encore]

Even as Josh fired, it was in vain, as Rain had stopped running backward as soon as Joshua had began to run forward, and had ducked in such way that his shoulders were facing Joshua's rig, but his body was a ways back, this sort of awkward football-esque lean was perfect as Rain attempted a bearhug at the enemy Mobile Suits's waist and firing off his now charged shoulder-cannons. If he somehow missed his enemy he would touch down with his hand and keep running in the other direction, even with the little stumble.

[dudewheresmygundam]

So sorry about how long this reply took.  Couldn't get folks on AITW to leave me alone for a bit.

Joshua looked at the charging Hellion with a measure of surprise. It's almost as though in his determination to attempt a kill shot, Rain had forgotten about the massive spear in his Fanton's hands. Nonetheless, in it came, bringing its cannon into line to fire again. But this time, Joshua was preapred, shifting stances to prepare himself and his lance for his counter-attack.

Attempting to bear hug the Fanton was a novel idea, true enough. But for this situation it brought the combat in much too close for Joshua not to use his spear to its fullest extent. Raising his spear above his mobile suit's head, tip pointed forwards towards the Hellion - Joshua tried to duck neither the shot nor the bear hug. Indeed, he even stepped right up into the path of the enemy. The cannon burned right through the extra armor plating of the torso, revealing the normal torso armor underneath.

But in return for accepting all the damage the cannon could do - Joshua now had an unobstructed view of the Hellion's exposed back. At the moment their suits collided, Joshua brought his spear down. Given he had used his own suit as the obstacle to deny the enemy any chance to swerve out of the way at the last second - Joshua truly struggled to foresee any outcome for this attack other than what he intended:

His spear, stabbed into the backpack of the Hellion, ripping through the cockpit, head, and thruster assembly alike. A critical amount of damage the Hellion could not recover from. The cannon shot hurt plenty - but the extra armor plates had been fitted for just these kinds of reasons. To absorb the worst of the damage the enemy could do and buy Joshua time to strike a decisive counter-attack. And even if, by some miracle, Joshua missed the backpack - any evasive maneuver would still split an arm from the opposing mecha just based on angle of attack.

[encore]

Joshua strikes as intended, crippling Rain's suit.

[Loss]

[Usam1981]

The moment that Rain's mobile suit fell, the dammage simulators reset back to base line. The fighter steped out onto the arena floor.

"The winner, JOSHUA. Joshua will be going on to round two of the tournament, and Encore will be added to the wild card pick.