What little of the cavern was visible was illuminated by garish floodlights, that served to illuminate structural highlights such as environmental regulations systems, or the massive, massive pistons that joined the building's suspension frame to the rest of the cavern, stretching up and down like great, gleaming stalagmites and stalactites.

Which were also illuminated, incidentally by the lights from the other two walkers, as they droned low over the surface of the suspended building complex. The more damaged of the two set down on one of the buildings, causing it to sag slightly in its frame—an effect that was countered as two great sets of pistons responded to gently ease the end of the section up higher. The second had veered away as Tracer had interrupted the walkers' dual flanking maneuver, but was returning and now moved in to back up the damaged leader.

Its nose-gun opened up, shooting a burst of glowing tracer fire as the walker sought to intercept the hijacked one as it proceeded on its way to...

No-where.

The extension complex seemed to come to an abrupt end, narrowing off as it reached the end of the cave wall.

A universal joint segment, big enough for a hotshot walker to get through, joined the apparent last room in the artificial cavern to the inside of the cavern wall, where it was plated all around with something in the line of several tons of armour.

The join from the building complex to the wall was apparently designed to be impervious to entrance from the outside—massive sandwiches of corrugated aluminum were plated with 5 inches of steel and affixed around the join with giant staples like rail-way ties, and reinforcing beams that cantilevered against the wall below to force the enormous, piecemeal shield up in a defensive position. Very little short of a bunker-buster would penetrate the hallway except from the inside.

[]We'll be moving and AWOL the next few days so I thought I'd tuck in a post before I left. sorry its so big.[]

Tracer smirked under her helmet as the remaining walker turned to meet her. One hand steered the beast away from the hot retaliation being fired at her as her hand scanned over buttons as she tried to remember which was which. She found one and the walkers legs did something she imagined would work better for some sort of evasive maneuver if they weren't in the air still. It's slow flight wasn't ideal for dodging bullets and some ripped off panels of metal or holes into the walker. But she'd managed to keep the damage to a minimum.

Her ability to move was hampered by the lumbering flight this thing was capable of. So she just cut the engines over the same section of hall way in front the other walker, but behind one of the support pillars. She didn't come down softly nor did she even slow her decent before she smashed into the roof of the rooms below. The structure didn't shift gently like it did when the other walker landed where as Tracer more so dropped onto it. The structure lerched towards her, shifting the other end and walker up in an awkward angle as her hand found the button she wanted. The manual controls for weapons folded out from beside the chair and out of the console in front of her. But unfortunately, the targeting part just bonked into the side of her helmet given how far forward the llama was crammed into the seat. She reached back and yanked it forward. Having ripped the canopy off make it possible to steal the walker but without it she had to use manual targeting for the weapons, obviously.

She pressed the button she had earlier and the vehicle started to strife as the pistons struggled to correct what she'd done. Leaving behind the dent in the roof her walker came to a stop before the edge of the room and opened fire. No bullets for this guy, rockets. She didn't seem concerned about what stray rockets in this part of the cavern would do. Just after launching a small volley a irritating beeping came from the console with a little red light informing the new pilot that she'd fired off the last of her remaining rockets...

The walkers, slow as they were in a standing position, were primarily anti-personnel and not particularly adept at evading their own missiles. The foremost walker suffered a volley to the face, and blew apart, leaving a smoking husk on top of a set of legs.

There was a woomph noise, and the last walker seemed to teeter a bit, before lifting off. It angled slightly, as if it was about to fly forward. Then it exploded too.

Coop dropped down on the roof of Tracer's walker, and peered down into the cockpit.

"Hey," he said, grinning brightly, "we gotta get out of here, fast. We've got maybe two minutes before the whole building upstairs blows apart."

Coop stared at the ceiling for a few moments, as if trying to work out something, and then looked back at the two of them standing beside him. He appeared to be suppressing a grin. His eyes had lit up with a devilish glee.

"Oh, and speaking of which, you might want to get that thing off the ground." He gave up trying to hold back the grin, and it split his face, ear to ear. "Archer, hold on."

Coop began beating his wings, and with a few broad strokes was off the ground.

"Come on," he said, beginning to tread backwards through the air, away from the greater part of the complex, "lets get away from this thing."

There was about ten seconds of silence, broken only by distant alarms, and the distant whir of ventilation systems. Then an abrupt POW echoed around the chamber, accompanied by a flash of light and an agonized mechanical screaming as the pipes feeding hydraulic pressure to the greater part of the structure were burst open, and began venting pressurized fluid at a frightening rate.

A dull rumble began to fill up the room, as several pistons, dis-lodged from their places in the ceiling by another set of explosives, swung downwards in huge, slow arcs, and crashed into the pistons beneath, wrenching the suspended buildings in the process. Some had huge structural chunks ripped away, as the giant pistons cantilevered around on their way down, others swung and danced on their suddenly slack supports, crashing into each other and further shaking the already weakened support structure. More pistons began to twist out of the ceiling, agitated by the heaving metal mass below.

About ten seconds after the first explosions, the hydraulic system restarted. The compromised valves began to close, and the back-up hydraulic system began feeding pressure into the system again. Pistons began to stretch outwards again, as computer controls attempted to find some equalibrium.

But it was too late.

Broken, and still sagging under the weight of the fallen pistons, the working hydraulic rams, unable to find a point at which to stop pushing, only forced the out-of-wack buildings to skew further, twisting them around until the remaining buildings with functional joints were ripped apart by the torque.

Several of the piston sets, pushing too far outside their boundaries, began to intersect with each other and lock, shearing against each other and placing even more strain on the structure.

Coop flapped off to the very far edges of the artificial chasm, as, with one last tortured groan, the whole ensemble ripped itself off the ceiling, turned itself upside-down, and collapsed in a sparking, malfunctioning mess on the chasm floor below.

Their immediate next target, the armoured tunnel into the wall, lay exposed, in the distance, illuminated from within by emergency lights.

Whooping, Coop circled around, and began a slow, low glide towards the tunnel's mouth.

(to accelerate the closing of the thread, I think this would be a fine place for us to generally wrap up. Feel free to post some closing remarks.)

[]sorry for the delay.[]

Tracer glanced back towards Coop as he warned her against remaining where she was, the walkers little rockets fired off again as she started to drift away following Coop to what could be loosely regarded as a safe distance. For now it did what it could, the shaking cavern and collapsing structure finally opened up the path to them. Tracer was wondering how she'd get in there, and for once was glad to have her cohorts along. Not that she'd say as much. She guided the walker towards the opening and hovered there. She said nothing giving the deer seconds to get off, before she jumped from the cockpit of the hovering robot into the hole. The mecha drifted around drunkenly before it dropped to the bottom of the chamber to join the rest of the twisted scrap metal.

She landed with a heavy thud, her armor was scuffed from gun fire, but still in good shape. She was mostly unharmed and her only standing disadvantage was a lack of ammo. So the Tank-Llama lead the way into the armored hall towards their prize. It seemed they where closing in on victory.

OOC: Just a little unnecessary something to cap off Jam's existence in this thread.

It was probably a good thing that Rock seemed less adversely affected by falling skies than Jam. One glance at her panic-stricken, wild-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights expression was enough to know that whatever seat-of-her-pants solution she was concocting was probably not only a bad idea, but would likely result in another lovely vacation in St. Carter's.

At the very least, she had the presence of mind to ignite her shield (albeit a little over-zealously) upon the more practical primate's intercession on her behalf.It fell silent almost immediately upon the cessation of the tremors, much like her incredulously awe-struck, "We're alive!" sort of expression, which she cast about their immediate vicinity in stark contrast to the whiter simian's less-than-pleased one.

When all was said and done, though, Jam had but one thing to add to Rock's apt assessment of their situation, before gradually following his lead:

"Yeah. Lots and lots of balls."