"Uhhh, what do you mean by that?" Paul asked slightly confused. "I'm already a man!"
"It was a joke... you earned your man card already after that match when we teamed up with the GameGo Gamers!" Gray said proudly.
Everyone remembered how Paul had basically let his mech be destroyed piece by piece to keep protecting Stacia's mech even after it was unable to move and nodded in agreement except for Jono who was unaware of this.
"This time, instead of showing us your bravery, we want to see your badassery!" Gray proclaimed.
"Bad...assery? You just made that up didn't you?" Paul complained.
"Maybe, but I'm sure others have used it, surely you know what I mean Geoff or Jono?" Gray asked.
"Heck yeah!" Jono said while fist pumping with his mech.
"It's like, the art of being a bad ass!" Geoff exclaimed.
Xyra, Stacia, and Yurika exchanged looks with each other and privately said to each other that men were idiots.
As if it was perfectly timed, a volley of 8 missiles was launched from the enemy in their direction.
This time Stacia spotted them first as she remembered where the first missile had come from and yelled "Take cover!"
Yurika and Geoff crouched behind a large boulder, Paul raised his shield and knelt down with it covering Stacia as well, Caleb and Xyra were already behind cover due to instinctively looking for places to snipe from, and Gray and Jono could only hope the thick trees they were next to could provide enough cover for them.
The missiles were targeted at the last known location of where Stacia was but were set to heat-seeking after a certain distance so they wouldn't hit just ground since the enemy was at least smart enough to know that nobody would stick around in the same spot.
The 3 missiles on the left broke off towards Yurika and Geoff, 2 missiles in the middle continued towards Paul and Stacia, and the 3 missiles on the right broke off towards Gray and Geoff.
The 3 missiles aiming at Yurika and Geoff slammed into the boulder, shattering almost the entire boulder. Yurika and Geoff peeked up over the remains of the boulder and knew they needed to find different cover if another missile or two came towards them again.
The 2 missiles coming towards Paul and Stacia collided with Paul's shield, but since Paul was holding the shield directly against them, the shield took a small amount of damage this time since it wasn't able to redirect the blast away. Gray wondered if Yurika could help him with shield handling since she had helped Gray earlier, even though it was mostly just Gray getting beaten up.
While thinking this, the last three missiles struck the trees where Gray and Jono were taking cover behind. Unfortunately the trees could only stop one missile each since they were coming in from above and would not hit any branches from a direct shot. As soon as the missiles descended into the trees, both Gray and Jono darted for cover behind different trees than before. The two trees they were behind were hit, blasting each tree in to two parts leaving half of a tree standing and the top half getting blown away from the explosion and crashing in to other trees around it. The third missile barely missed Gray as he heard his AI, Tiara, shout "dodge left!"
Without thinking about it, Gray dodged left as he heard this and the missile buried itself in the snow and exploded, his mech received minor damage to its legs and was covered in dirt and snow from the blast.
"Thanks Tiara!" Gray said as he shook the debris off of his mech and tested his legs to make sure they were still working.
"Of course Gray! We're in this together!"
Only Gray could hear Tiara talk, but for some reason he pictured a cute bubbly girl speaking even though Tiara didn't have a physical body or even an avatar.
"Amazing dodge dude!" Jono exclaimed "How did you know when to side step?"
"My AI, Tiara, told me, the training AIs are super helpful!"
"Tiara?" Jono stifled a laugh "What kinda girly name is that!"
"Tiara is a girl... what else would I give her?"
"Her?" Jono asked questioningly.
"Yes, I treat Tiara the same as everyone else, plus I've never had an AI with this level of self-awareness before so I feel more comfortable this way"
"True... the first is always your most memorable..." Jono said wistfully.
Gray could tell he was thinking of something else altogether and grabbed a handful of snow with his mech and chucked it at Jono. The snow glob merely thudded against the mech, but was enough of a distraction to bring Jono out of his trip down memory lane.
"Back on topic! Paul! You're the only one with portable cover, and you happen to have that grenade launcher accessory on the spear right?"
"Yes Gray! It only has 2 shots, but I can reload it!"
"Good, so Paul, you are going to approach from their southern flank while hugging the edge of the map, the rest of us are going to keep them distracted by dancing in and out of sensor range from the North East front to make it look like we're probing for an opening."
"Ok... and that is when I go kamikaze and disrupt their formation by blasting them with grenades? I don't think I can do that with just a two-shot grenade launcher."
"Yes and no, I want you to go alone with your grenade launcher and get in as close as possible, but I want you to aim for the mountain peak,I want to bury them in the snow."
"Yes, that is a great idea!"
"Of course it is! I came up with it after all!" Gray said proudly.
Immediately several clumps of snow came flying towards Gray's mech as everyone pelted his mech with snowballs.
Gray wiped the snow from his mech's face and said "Sorry, I couldn't resist!"
"Careful butt head! I know where you sleep!" Yurika said pretending to be mad.
Geoff snickered and said "We all know you do!"
While it wasn't possible for mechs to blush, everyone swore that Yurika's mech turned a slight shade of pink for a brief moment.
Gray looked over at Jono and saw that he was also picking up snow in his mech and tried his best to make a snow ball with it, but he had stopped after closing his mech's fingers around the snow and seemed to be lost in thought.
"Jono, what are you doing?"
"I saw this in a movie once! I want to see if it works with the next missile volley!"
Gray was afraid to ask because he knew he would want to try it too so instead he issued commands. "Paul, head South West, when you reach sector C5, head west and get to the edge of the map in sector A5, then proceed North. Inform us when you arrive and we'll proceed with the rest of the plan!"
"Yes sir!" Paul said resolutely as he picked up his shield and trotted south west in his mech towards C5.
Gray was about to say that everyone must call him sir from now on, but he felt killing intent emanating from Yurika as she probably figured what he was going to say. Gray wisely chose not to say it and instead said "Everyone else, we're going north to D10, keep your sensors passive Stacia, if they don't see us they will probably keep their defensive positions."
Various forms of confirmation from everyone as Paul made his way South West while everyone else headed north.
Paul really like his Hoplite Mk 01, but he had to admit that in a straight line it was painfully slow compared to other mechs. It may have had fast limb speed compared to other heavy mechs, but that didn't apply to the legs since they needed more strength than other mechs to be able to support the weight of the mech and the shield that could weigh as much as a light mech.
Gray realized as everyone waited for Paul to get into position that he never took into account Paul's slow movement speed, especially with the weather slowing them down, as they had already used up half of the time. While none of them had been destroyed or disabled, matchmaking would still chalk it up as a loss for them since they had taken a tiny amount of damage.
"So... almost there Paul?"
"...almost to the edge... let's call it close enough!"
"Works for me, now head north and get as close as you need to be able to get those grenades where we need them."
"Gray, I have a problem that might make your plan worthless..."
"I know you're slow, but you don't need to go nearly as far as before."
"No... the grenade launcher doesn't have the range to land a grenade that high!"