Act 70: Bandit Bait

After Seph was fixed, it was about time for the briefing to begin, given in the commander's tent to everyone present.
Mattias is there to begin explaining to them, showing them a screen that is displaying a carriage one usually sees being used to transport goods, and it looks absolutely loaded. "Alright, let's start Operation Honey Pot, or Operation 001. We are going to be moving into bandit raiding territory with a very tempting-looking target...a carriage that looks like it's overflowing with all kinds of goodies that bandits would salivate just seeing the volume. However this carriage is a farce." The display on the screen changes, showing that the appearance of the carriage being full of valuables is just superficial, and the inside seems to be some sort of armored metallic container with gun holes in various directions, looks like it can be easy for someone to fit inside of it. Mattias continues explaining what this is. "Inside of this there will be two to three operatives ready to unleash hell on the surrounding bandits, that 'surprise box' can take small arms fire well enough, and the armored glass around panes that you can see near the gun holes will provide good visibly to whoever is aiming inside of it, but if it looks like it will be break, it can be easily closed. There is also five three possible hatches that you can use to leave the surprise box in case it gets too damaged, and to make it easy for you to leave unharmed, it can also deploy a thick smokescreen around itself that you can be used so the occupants could use thermal vision to continue fighting while covered in the smoke."
One of the other humans present, that big woman that goes by the codename 'Brigadier General', raises her hands because she has a question. "Are you certain that putting everyone in that is a good idea?"
"No, that is why I said there can be two to three people in there. The others can attack the bandits while they are busy dealing with initial tanky surprise." 

"Wouldn't it be easier to simply load it up with explosives or IEDs? Or flashbangs if we're trying for capture?" Neso has to ask.

Mattias blinks and looks to Isaac, only the guy of 'Special weapons and tactics' could come up with such unorthodox thing like this, so he is the one who should know about that.
There is just a thumbs up from the back from the man himself, so that's an affirmation and for Mattias to continue.
"We are not going easy on them huh?" Perhaps he underestimated the willingness of Avali to be efficient with the act of killing. "That is entirely possible, yes. Though I'm leaving the amount of lethality to your discretion, for this one. So go nuts if you want."

"Hmmm..." Neso thinks on this. "Last time we did kind of go guns blazing. Though it sounds like you are hoping for capture. We can either use rigged explosives to take a few out when they lift one of the treasure chests. Or rig them to a collection of flashbangs that go off from the same trigger. I'll leave that up to you guys."

"Yes, I would like to have a few prisoners to question about who and how they got the guns...and the Emeras." He sighs. "But we are no strangers to dealing swift and decisive blows. It is even possible for us to make it so that the surprise they find is rigged grenade launches that when activated can spread out explosives all around the carriage for maximum coverage. That would be good, right?" The human rubs his chin. "But now the final question should be, what kind of grenades do we want to use, which will dictate either a non lethal or lethal approach. It could very well be flashbangs, sleeping gas or fragmentation shells or high explosive. Quite some options we can get with little 40mm cartridges, huh?"

"Well if we want to take prisoners, probably the better one would be flashbangs. Light fragmentation at the very heaviest. Nothing overly huge. If we want to take prisoners, the last thing we need is to turn our interrogees into a red crater."

"Yes, quite right." Though when they get the knowledge he is looking for, he wonders how much explosive they will begin using. "Now let us move to the next part of the setup. The initial placement of the team. Neso, you think it's best to close the carriage or follow it from afar?"

"That part's easy." Neso says confidently . "Following it from afar, of course. We are not close brawlers. And besides, it kind of wrecks the whole point of the explosives if we're up close to it."

"Mmm-mmmm." Mattias nods to that. "Alright, so Neso. Just to be sure of who and how many of you are going, who are the members of your pack again?"

"Well,  there's me, Neso." The brown avali points to himself. "Then there's Rali" the white-colored female avali raises her hand.  "Eili"  The black female avali raises her hand. "Veers." The male espeon raises his hand. "... Yeah, we need to think of a new name for him. Eventually. Maybe. Not really." Neso comments. "And finally Seph. Who's..."
A few loud footfalls approach as the huge snake-like robot takes his place in line right next to Veers. 
"... Here and present." Neso finishes, obviously about to say something else but it no longer seems appropriate.

"That would make nine operatives in total." Mattias says, looking at the now complete pack that belongs to Neso, and the three other humans. "Considering that all of you are the most fighting fit, deploying all of you at once seems like it could leave Sandgun really vulnerable. but i'm not saying anything about splitting you up, no, it would defeat the whole point of you being a pack. Neso, your whole pack can go take on this mission and Jormar will be going with you, does that sound good?"

"Alright then." He nods. "Let's not screw around anymore, the carriage will be ready by the time you get deployed to the operation zone, just strap up and hop to it. I already gave the coordinates for where you will be dropped to your pilot."

"Very well. We'll go there now." Neso nods to his group, and they nod back. Veers gives Mattias one more look, before heading out with his pack.

With the briefing done, it was time for everyone to get to work, with some like Mattias going to monitor things from afar while the Avali pack and the human that was sent out with them go unto the flying transport to be taken to the area of operation.
Now that everyone's armed and ready and on route to where they need to go, all that is left is waiting. The bald human that is with them, Jormar, has been eyeing their ranged weaponry but has just been quite on his corner mostly, unless spoken to. As for the weapon he brought along, it is a rifle, might not reach the technological prowess that the Avalis' technology have, but it does look like quality. The stock is solid, the barrel is long and it has a scope...perfect to shoot at things very far away.
(image)

The avali pack meanwhile are camped out on a nearby hill. Since the objective here is going to be capture rather than kill, the team has decided to leave their heavier gear behind, in lieu of the same loadout they had the last time they were deployed on a mission with sub MGs and pistols mostly. The sole exception being Seph and Eili, the former of which is armed with a heavy hammer for close-quarters combat, he intends to go in swinging after the initial flashbang and knock out the affected ones. Eili meanwhile is armed with a standard FM Firelance sniper rifle, ready to assist Jormar with sniping.

When they boots on the ground and it was time to keep their eyes open, Jormar stopped eyeing their hardware and instead began focusing on the mission instead.
They see the carriage in the distance, that very same one that was shown on the briefing, it looks like it is being pulled by a big pokémon that is all covered up in cloth pieces, but it looks reptilian, that is certain. There also two other smaller pokémon on the carriage are similarly overly dressed, perhaps because of the fact those mustn't be pokémon, they are completely stiff as if they are made of wood...probably just mannequins to help sell the illusion that this is a caravan going somewhere. Naturally the carriage would need to be followed for afar for some time as it didn't get attacked right off the bat.
Though eventually they would notice that the carriage was starting to get followed by someone else too, and it's those armed pokémon bandits, it looks like they took the bait. They could be preparing to move in on the carriage any moment now...

"Looks like they're taking the bait. Get ready." Neso nods to his group. Seph gets into position, not quite getting ready just yet as they aren't on top of the cart just yet. 
"Remember, leg and arm shots only if you can help it." Neso reminds the team. "We have to take at least 3 of these bandits back to base for interrogation. And we can't question corpses."
"Well, you can, but you won't get anywhere." Rali quips.
"... Right." Eili deadpans back. "Anyway, I've got them in my sights. I'm going to aim for the bandits further back, the ones that won't be affected by the blast."
"Very good. As we know, Seph will go in right after the blast, hopefully he'll take down a few of them before the rest have a chance to pick up their guns."
"I'm ready to do my part." Seph takes out his hammer, and gives it a fast one-handed spin before letting it rest on the ground while still holding it with one hand.

More and more bandits began showing up, most but not all of them are armed, and they began to encircle the carriage and are demanding to stop, or else...And the one pulling it complies, naturally. Now that these armed assailants think they have their prey on the robes, they begin approaching it, the trap is sure to spring at any moment now...The team might not want to be looking directly at it when it does so, it is going to be a lot of bright flashes.
Seeing that the time to act is almost here, the human gives his gun a quick check just be absolutely sure it is ready to fire. The safety is off and the bullet is on the chamber, good. "I will aim for the targets further away on the front."

"Pos that."Neso replies. 
"I'll aim for the ones in the back, and the ones that give the pack any trouble." Eili confirms.

Things keep playing out down there, with the bandits getting into a sense of security given the easy picking that they just got. And when he thought no one was particularly looking his way, he reached somewhere under his clothing for something...a small detonator-like device. He pressed it and threw himself to the floor, covering his head with his big hands, much to the confusion of the armed bandits around him who as some began shouting at him to stay still.
And that's when everything started ramping up, some parts of the carriage were removed to reveal the automated grenade launcher systems installed on it, which has barrels angled up and ready to give a blast to everything around. It really couldn't have gone better, all the hostile armed pokémon just looked at the strange metal tubes spitting out those objects all around the carriage, and they easily fell victims to the loud explosions that generated intense flashes of light. How many flashbang cartridges were put in that surprise present? 5? 10? There certainly were many flash explosions that left a lot of pokémon down there with sensory overload.
Jormar doesn't start aiming down the scope on his rifle just yet though, if there are more flashbangs that haven't exploded just yet, looking through a magnifying scope at a possible flash of light wouldn't go well for him. 

There are indeed a few more that go off. And there is even a secondary surprise: An extremely loud wail plays from a loudspeaker inside the wagon, filling the immediate area with an unbearably loud noise that sounds like a large pulsing engine of some sort. This latest addition was added to further mask the approach of the ambush crew. 
None the less they can hear the confused shouts of some of the mons. 
"ACK!"
"THE FUCK!?"
"MAKE IT STOP!!"
"CAN'T FUCKIN' SEE!!"
Some clutch their ears at the noise, others take their weapons and fire around blindly and wildly, trying desperately to hit whatever they think is coming next. Unfortunately for them, all they manage to do is hit ammo, though one of them at least manages to get one hit in... on one of his buddies, right in the shoulder blade. 
"Goin' in!" Seph shouts as he crouches down, and leaps towards the group of confused bandits hammer in hand. The large robo-serpent hits the ground and kicks up a cloud of dust as he does, his hammer quickly finds its way to the hind limbs of one of the bandits, only to quickly turn and trip up another.

A Krookodile that can still somewhat see spots the cloud of sand that suddenly appeared, in his panic he thinks that it is an enemy so he fires at it with the shotgun he has on, hoping to hit something.
Now taking aim, Jormar starts picking off the bandits that were the least affected by the initial flashbanging around the farthest part of the front of the carriage, starting by putting a bullet through the head of a Magby that seemed like it was still standing...well, he is not standing anymore now, that is certain.

Not to be outdone by the human, Eili takes 'aim' with the sniper rifle, though was with all avali tech, they aim mostly through their augments as there's oddly enough no scope or even any type of iron sights attached to the Firestorm sniper rifle. It hits a Ursaring way in the back that was preparing to fire a shotgun at the dust cloud. It goes down.
"Alright, Move!" Neso gives the order to the rest of his pack. 
Rali and Neso leap off the hill they are on, spreading their wings and gliding into the fray, while Veers slides his way down from the side.
"Remember, leg and arm shots only if you can help it" He orders in the air. Just after saying this, his foot connects with the 'helm' of a bulbasaur's head. 
Rali drops next to him, and her ears pick up a cocking of a gun. She turns, and before the gible could fire off its gun, the practiced avali aims at its feet, putting a few shots into the ground-type and causing it to fall to its knees. Rali then pistol-whips it in the back of the head, knocking it out.

They don't need all of them alive, and there are plenty of them alive yet, specially the pokémon who were the closest to the carriage and were all knocked out by the sheer concussive force of many flashbangs going off. So Jormar is going to keep perforating skulls from afar with great accuracy until told to do otherwise, and he is only focusing on the bandits that have guns on their hands and could pose an immediate threat to the team on the ground, like that Krookodile that was about to blindly fire another shell at the cloud of sand. He just got shot in the head too.
Yes, there are indeed some unarmed pokémon amongst the bandits, and they try to attack as well, thinking that they can rush down these enemies to engage them in melee combat. Some examples of mons that are doing that is an Axew trying to tackle Neso and a Zweilous approaching Seth to bite him with both of their mouths.

Not to be outdone, Eili takes 'aim' with her sniper rifle, hitting a numel in the back who was taking aim at Seph with an assault rifle.  A Teddiursa is about to pull a pistol when it is shot in the legs by someone off to the side. The female falls to the ground in pain, dropping her weapon and clutching her leg in pain as she rolls in the sand. Another bandit turns to face the newcomer and confront the incoming Espeon, when he too is legged by Neso, while Seph knocks another out with his hammer.
Either through capture or through killing, it seems the bandits are being severely reduced in number now.
"We got enough prisoners now, let's wrap this up." Neso orders over his built-in intercom.
Neso hears the Axew coming and ducks out of the way of the attempted tackle, while Seph is unfortunately not so lucky. He barely manages to get his arm up in time to block it.
"AGH!" He yells as those mouths come down on the arm that's blocking their attack. Luckily for seph, the arm holds as it's pure durasteel.

The Axew, having missed his tackle, came to a stop and looked back at the Avali, now that he knows that the enemy is fully aware of him, he isn't very confident about attacking anymore, he is most likely going to get shot if he tries anything. "Wait...! Don't shoot me please!" Seems like he is surrendering.
The Dragon with two heads clamped both their jaws on pure durasteel...and it HURTS. But they still keep trying to push on in an attempt to injure this metal creature they never saw before, trying to pin him to the ground...but that might not be really a possibility. 

Neso, seeing that his opponent is surrendering, holds his fire. 
"DOWN ON THE GROUND!" He yells at him. "DO IT!"
Seph grunts in 'pain' as the mouths try further to clamp down on his armored arm. But doing this has left the dragon exposed, As seph pulls his arm up, lifting the dragon as high as he can, and then, with his other hand, brings the business end of the hammer right into the dragon's exposed stomach.

The smaller dragon type didn't try any funny business and lays down on the sand, complying with Neso's command.
As for the other dragon, the one with two heads, received a pretty nasty blow on the stomach and got knocked away from the Synth. They didn't get back up after that, but they aren't dead, just too painful to move.
And with that it looks like all threats were either eliminated or pacified. The fighting is pretty much over right now...but Jormar sees a Zorua and a Marshtomp trying to make a break for it and escape. He is already taking aim at the Zorua though.

While the other pack members may be preoccupied with the captured and the dead, Veers notices the two escape. While not quite familiar with his powers, he tries to send out a psychic warning to them.
"STOP!" he shouts psychically. "DON'T RUN! YOU'LL DIE!"
Sadly, since the Zorua is a dark type, only the Marshtomp is able to heed the call.

It seems that his Psychic shout did work, it made the Marshstomp stop. The Zorua however, only stopped when another shot rang out and he fell down to the ground after getting sniped.

"Good." Veers tells him psychically. "If you want to live, get down on the ground. Put your hands over your head."

Perhaps he sees no other way out, so he decides to listen to this voice in his head and gets himself down on the ground because he doesn't want to die like that Zorua just did. 
Jormar had his crosshairs over the Marshtomp too but since it looks like he isn't going to escape he just proceeds to survey the battlefield to look for others, if any, targets. It looks like there is no more need for him to shoot though.

Eili is likewise scanning around, keeping an eye on the downed bandits.
Neso scans the battlefield, looking for any more targets, and finding none, he communicates over his coms. 
"Mission accomplished." He announces. He turns to Veers and Rali. "Veers, Rali, start patching up the legged ones and cuff'em and get them ready for transport. Eili, Jormar, keep your eyes on us while we do that.  Seph..."
He turns towards seph looking at his arm.
"You okay there big guy?" He asks. "You look like you took a bit of a beating there."
"Yeah." Seph replies. "I'm fine. Just had one try to bite me. Didn't work too well, just a bit of minor denting."
"Good. Join the others in the recovery effort. Oh, and..."
It's at this point that he notices that the noise-drone is still going. With his nexus hud, he brings up the menu for it, and without even lifting a finger, the noise stops.
"... That can stop now."

Someone is getting up now, but it's not one of the bandits, it's that pokemon who was pulling the carriage. It's a Kommo-o, now without all that load of clothing it's easy to tell which species he is, though he wasn't really hiding much with how big he is. "Finally...i was getting tired of all that noise." He sighs.
The Axew bandit that had surrendered looks up at Neso. "Who...are you people?"

"I'd explain, but you'll find out soon enough." Neso tells the Axew, barely paying any attention to him. 
"Alright, let's get these guys cuffed and bound. Then we'll call the shuttle here and call it a day." He gives the order to the pack that's surrounding him. "I'm calling in the dropship as we speak." 
"Pos that." Rali nods as she, Seph, and Veers start the task of binding the captured bandits, and wrapping up the wounds of any that were hit in the legs, so they don't bleed out.

Well, things look like they are wrapping up, whatever bandits are alive are being apprehended, and it looks like it would just be smooth sailing from here.
Although Jormar spots something unusual...it's a glare of light reflecting off of something on the other side of the battlefield. The human hastily took aim at the source of this reflection of light in the distance before breaking the silence with another singular gun shot.

The crew below hear the shot ring out, they stop what they were doing for a second. Thinking one of the bandits was trying to run off, they see... Nothing out of the ordinary from their level.
"Okay, what was that about?" Neso rings Jormar over the intercom.

"I saw something, it looked like sunlight reflecting off of a scope." The human explained over the coms. "I can't quite make it out if it's still there, but I'm certain that I hit something. If you want to have it checked out someone has to go up there, you could tell the dragon with clanging scales to do so if you don't wish to do it yourselves." By 'dragon with the clanging scales' he must mean the Kommo-o.

Neso thinks for a moment, looking over the scene there, at all the bandits on the ground, dead or captured, and then off to the distance to where Jormar was referring to., He shakes his head.
"Neg. It's not part of our mission, or even an objective. Besides, we need everyone here to deal with the prisoners, and I'd rather not jeopardize the mission by going after a complete unknown. Let it go for now, but we'll add it to the debriefing." He tells him over the intercom. A loud hum, one familiar to the avali, but not to the bandits, begins to fill the air and grows louder as the dropship approaches.

"Pos that." He said to Neso over the coms before going silent again. Orders are orders after all. Hearing this noise Jormar figures it's almost time for them to leave, though he will stick with Eili to cover them until either she or Neso says it's time for them to come down from there to get in the dropship so they can leave.

The dropship arrives overhead, casting a large shadow over the bandits and cart. 
"Alright. Eili, Jormar, meet us down here for extraction. Everyone else, let's get these lousy bandits up and back to base, so we can find out where the hell they're getting these guns from." Neso orders.  He takes a look at the bandits. 
"A fair warning, but it might get a bit cramped up there." He says with a small growl. His eyes narrow. "Get used to it."
Before they can respond, one by one, the live ones disappear in a flash of light. Soon, only Neso's pack, the Kommo-o 'driver' of the cart, and the dead are left behind as Neso awaits the other two before beaming out.
Eili takes this as her cue to get up, and make her way down to the cart. She slings her rifle on her back, and leaps off her perch, quickly joining the other two down below.
"Here and present." Eili announces. Now all that's left is Jormar.

To get down from up there, the human simply took a small leap forward and planted his feet down upon the steep slope of the sand dune so he could slide down the dune to get to where the others are, then he just had to walk to them. "Present." Jormar announces much like Eili did. "Mission accomplished. I am ready for extraction."
"Yeah you guys made that crap look easy! Made these bandits look like complete chumps!" The Dragon-type sings praise as he walks over to them. "Anyways uuh, i'm gonna stay behind to clear this mess, and get the cart out of here. you know the dirty work. I can go back to base though, Mattias has that covered for me."

Soon, all the prisoner's hands and mouths are tied, just to prevent any mouth-based attacks from being used upon them en-route back to base. And with the dropship here and the pack ready to go, they're ready to extract.
"Hold up, one moment..."
"Neso, wha?" Seph asks, but before Neso can reply, he's beamed up to the ship, only to beam back a few seconds later with something in hand. A very large metallic object.
"Figured I wouldn't leave that last loose end completely untied." He says as he tosses it into the air, the object extending its fans and taking flight, the object obviously being a drone. It soon begins to fly off towards that area where Jarmar shot at.
"There, that way we don't have to break off from the mission to go check it out."
Neso clears his throat and continues.
"Alright, beam up the prisoners first." He orders. "Then we'll beam up ourselves, and get the hell out of here." He looks towards the cart driver dragon. "Erm, you sure you got this?" 
As he asks this, the prisoners in question disappear one by one in a flash of light, only to reappear inside the dropship. Once all the prisoners are gone, Seph goes next, then Eili and Veers, and finally Rali.

The dragon nods, the scales on his head that resemble headdress make a bit of noise in the process. "Yeah, I got this. don't worry. I will just load them in the wagon and get out of here as fast as possible before they realize their raiding party got taken out."
It doesn't take much for the drone to find it from the air. And it turns out to be a brown-colored metallic spherical object that is about as big as the drone itself. It has a camera-like eye sticking out, but this is obviously destroyed because that's where the bullet Jormar fired went into. This is obviously another drone, certainly not an Avali model or even an Apex model. It seems like it has ceased functioning when it got shot too.

The avali drone tilts left and right as it views and inspects the foreign damaged drone, broadcasting what it 'sees' back to the base, before beeping and flying off to the direction of Sandgun.
With the live bandits now on board the dropship, and the pack all save one on board, Jormar and Neso  beam on board, both of them disappearing in a flash of light.
And reappearing on board. 
"Yesh, sure it's cramped up here." Neso comments. The prisoners are sitting against the walls, but even so, there's very little room for him to walk over to the cockpit. 
"Well, the dropship wasn't meant to take this many people on at once". Rali retorts. "Guess they weren't expecting us to come back with this many live ones."

"It should be straightforward enough if they aren't perchance deaf and blind permanently..." Jormar comments to the Avali. Those were a lot of flashbangs after all. "I believe that won't be an issue to you though."

"Even if it was, that's something for the guys back at base to sort out." Neso returns as he reaches the cockpit. "Speaking of, let's head for home."
A few clicks of a few buttons later, the dropship is headed back to base, as is the drone that took pictures of the curious other drone. As Neso said, it's not really in the mission profile, and it'll have to be something for the guys back at base to sort out.