Mark Hendrik and Steve Callaway walked up the library's only stairwell cautiously. Though
intended to be more agile than other battle armors, the Purifier suits were never designed for
climbing stairs. While trying to move quickly, the pair concentrated mostly on covering one
another as they made their way to the third floor. Though they were both veterans of battle
armor experiences, they had never used such stealth in all their military experience.
As they reached the first floor, the two power-armored men encountered their first library
visitors, an elderly couple. Because the Purifier armors were using a chameleon-effect
camouflage, Mark and Steve first confused and then frightened the pair. After jumping to the
floor instinctively as the armors walked nearer, the couple looked back as the two men trod
past, beginning to move up the next flight of stairs.
As Mark reached the fourth flight of stairs, he detected movement of an extra body somewhere
on the floor above him. While his logic told him it was probably a civilian, his instincts warned
him as his body involuntarily shuddered. He took a precautionary aim with his single weapon, a
powerful assault laser. Tracking the figure on his viewscreen scanners by its movement, he
watched it pause near the top of the steps above them. Whoever this individual was, they must
have heard the metal clang of the battle armor's feet.
"Watch it Steve, we've got suspicious movement up above. I don't know if its anything to worry
about, but I'm going to stick with the 'better safe than sorry' policy." Mark warned.
"There's civilians all over the place in here, Mark. What's so suspicious about this movement?"
Steve asked.
"Well, its not as if I can really tell, but they are..." Mark trailed off. His attention was now on a
sudden movement detected less than a meter above him. Looking up as the movement
descended, he caught a glimpse of a large book bouncing off the side of his battle armored visor.
"Heads up Steve!" he cried out. Suddenly the book exploded in a burst of fiery red. However
the explosion was not concussive. Instead it sprayed bright red liquid around the stairwell,
covering the battle armors and rendering their defensive chameleon-effect obsolete.
"We're sitting ducks on these stairs." Steve muttered. Suddenly detecting another movement
from above, he fired his laser up into the nearby fifth flight of stairs. The movement dropped
down in elevation, apparently sliding down the stairs until it disappeared into stillness.
"Mark! I'm reading something huge outside the library. This thing has got to be a Mech. We
have to move now!" Steve called out. Jumping to the steps before him, he tried to climb them
as quickly as possible.
"Not fast enough, take cover and prepare for evasive actions on the second floor!" Mark
exclaimed. Just as he finished his warning, a high powered laser blasted a hole through the wall
of the stairwell. The entire stairwell shuddered violently as a giant Mech smashed into it on the
outside wall. The stairwell and parts of the library began to collapse from the roof down.
"I'm tagging the Mech as a Spider, a 30 tonner!" Steve called out. But it was too late, Mark
had already lost his footing at the base of the second floor's entrance. As the stairwell collapsed
behind him, Mark was caught up in the falling rubble and disappeared off the edge into the
collapsing structure below.
"Mark, Mark do you read me?" Steve called out. As he prepared for the worst, he took his
first shot at the Spider, hitting its visible right hip joint through the falling stairwell rubble. Waiting
for his weapon to cool, he retreated into the second floor's main room, destroying the security
entrance by stomping through its detector. As he turned back to face his powerful, 30-ton foe,
Steve could see the Mech crouching down in order to come face to face with him. He watched
as a small portion of the melted armor on the Spider's hip joint buckled, then cracked off to
expose the weaker internal structure of the Mech's hip assembly.
"I gotta get another shot in there..." he thought to himself. Steve suddenly realized that the Mech
was bending down to physically attack Mark's battle armor suit. Able to do nothing for his
friend, Steve watched horrified as the Mech picked up the Purifier armor and smashed it into the
outside library wall. Breaking through with relative ease, the Mech's fist and Mark's armor
crashed downward through the third floor's outside wall. It then collapsed through the ceiling of
the second floor into Steve's sight. Mark's armored body came to rest after bouncing off of the
marbled floor about 10 meters away. It lay motionless, missing one leg from the knee joint down.
Gritting his teeth with the loss of his partner, Steve targeted the metal monster again through the
stairwell remains, this time hitting it in the hip of its opposite leg. He waited for the weapon to
cycle again, this time taking evasive action by running the Purifier armor down the length of the
library's outer hallway. After a few seconds he looked back through the hallway windows to see
the Spider outside, now lumbering towards him. Though it seemed to move incredibly slow
compared to his own mechanical armor, it quickly closed the distance between them in 3 strides.
Steve took aim at the Spider through the window. Waiting until the last possible moment, he
fired again into its right hip. Unfortunately he hit almost a meter from his previous shot. Steve
desperately hoped to handicap the Mech before it took his life as it had done Mark's.
The Spider's reply to Steve's shot came quickly. The first massive laser struck meters from the
Purifier armor, scorching a display of science books nearby. The second medium class laser
melted and sublimed a nearby storm window on the far side of the hallway, disappearing into the
floor to Steve's right.
Steve shuddered at the thought of such a massive amount of destructive energy. He hoped he
would never experience that kind of heat. As he began to run in the opposite direction from
before, actually moving towards the Mech, he prepared for its inevitable attempt to physically
crush him. He could see most of the Mech's body through the open side of the library.
Picking up speed, Steve watched as the Spider drew back its right arm for a punch into the
building. Though his armor had been covered with some sort of florescent paint, he knew that
the Spider's pilot was still having some difficulty in targeting him. "If only Mark had been so
lucky," Steve thought aloud. He was going to try getting as much payback as he could before
he met the same vicious fate as his friend.
Swinging faster than Steve anticipated, the Mech's armed crushed down into the second floor's
marble ceiling, about half a second after Steve had run past that very place. He slowed his
movement as quickly as possible, screeching across the marble only to slide into a stopped
position facing his foe. Still in relatively close quarters with the Mech, he fired out his fourth
attack on the giant. He hit again on the right leg, this time hitting its hip in yet another spot. The
laser barrage was gradually having some effect, and Steve could see another portion of the
armor become brittle and break away as the Spider shifted its legs to return fire.
As the Spider trained its twin, almost skeletal arms towards Steve, a burst of machine gun fire
ripped across the Mech's cockpit armor. Though only a limited burst from a small machine gun,
the Spider dismissed Steve as it turned its attention to its new foes, apparently the Longinus
battle armor of Steve's other teammates. The Spider fired somewhere up into the third floor, but
Steve couldn't see whether or not the Mech's attacks had done any damage.
As the entire west wall of the library began to collapse, Jasmine realized that her mission had
gone completely wrong. Underestimating the ambition of their enemy, the Strikers and Hueys
had planned for a heavily armed infantry attack. However it seemed as though their unknown
foes had gone the extra step, preparing an attack with a light scout Mech that could easily deal
with anti-infantry armor such as the Longinus and Purifier armors they had selected so carefully.
Jasmine now had no easy escape route. With a hole in her lungs and blood soaking into her
shoes, she was going to have to use the armor's jump jets to escape the massive new enemy that
now hunted the Hueys/Strikers combined data recovery team.
"Get down that hole!" called out Ryan Harrison as he let loose a heavy cover of machine gun
fire. Trying to draw its attention from Jasmine and the briefcase, he purposely hit the 30-ton
machine in the cockpit. As Jasmine clumsily disappeared into the hole in the marble floor, Ryan
prepared himself for the Spider's full attention. Without its usual Short Range Missiles, his
Longinus armor would have some major difficulties in doing any serious damage to this foe.
