12784/GIRL: Nefarious AIMs

GIRL: Nefarious AIMs
Date of Scene:	17 September 2022
Location:	The skies above Rann
Synopsis:	AIM's presence on Rann is confirmed in a sky battle with war zeppelins and the city of Ranagar is revealed to have come under recent siege.
Cast of Characters:	Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Natasha Romanoff, Valeria Richards, Victor Stone, Donna Troy, America Chavez, Kaida Connolly, Caitlin Fairchild

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Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    When we last left our heroes they had escaped a strange starship graveyard that pulled their ship out of warp, and an encounter with a crew of, seemingly time displaced, space pirates from Earth.

    The rest of the trip to Rann is thankfully far less eventful. Though the absence of distraction allows a sense of worry to hang in the air, particularly for Alanna, as the cause of the planet's interdiction to both long range stellar communications and Zeta Beam travel remains unknown.

    Arriving in system, the immediate cause remains elusive. There doesn't seem to be anything so convenient as a shimmering shield around the planet or a sattelite network to destroy, things seem almost ...normal.

    That, however, only lasts until the Tereshkova has finished its re-entry into Rann's atmosphere. Out of nowhere the ships shields are rocked by a series of explosions, one and then another and another, but they hold firm for now. On the view screen feed from the ship's sensors a pentad of yellow war zeppelins can be seen floating nearby in the skies over Rann and the tactical array confirms they are firing a barrage of, while quite high yield, conventional Earth air to air missiles at GIRL's ship!

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Normally when a huge barrage of rockets are sent over at a craft, the name of the game is saturation. Overhwelm the point defenses with enough firepower to break through and have at least some impacts. It's about math - how many missiles it takes to get through, and just enough for them to impact and take it out.
    Natasha goes to call out, "Activate jammers, all frequencies!" Given they don't necessarily know exactly what ones the oncoming missiles are tracking them on, this could amount to nothing. But when they're already being painted with enough targeting beacons to give them some idea..
    So hopefully flicking up all countermeasures to full power and random frequencies to try and disrupt lock ons to as best they can will take at least some of them out.
    Her other maneuvers are going to rapidly start to track the arc of the ship's maneuvers, and those of the missiles. "Rotate to have all turrets face them and engage point defenses." SHe's leaving the gunnery to others even as seh's charting intercept courses, trajectories, and evaluating the maneuverability and speed of the missiles blasting out over at them.

Valeria Richards has posed:
The thing about a lot of military actions are that it's a lot of boredom between small moments of sheer utter terror. It can also sometimes be said about space flight.

The flight itself should have been nice and dull, Val had some software compiling for another variation on the AI canines she was helping Vivian develop back on earth. Good holodoggo service companions.

But explosions and shields messing up gets the blonde. Powered up in her Val Suit. Just a more bikerish version of the usual Fantastoc Four uniform wiith visible padding ar her back, shoulders, arms, hips and thighs. White boots finishing the out fit.

Seing the ships own shields are down. The blonde scrambles to find a back up console and plugs her wrist comuter into it. "Shields down, re-routing and slaving control through personal forcefield. Doomtech kinetic absorbsion should get us at least a less horrible crash!" she calls out as she scrambled to hotwire hherself into the ships.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Cyborg's been kind of quietly keeping an eye on certain of the Tereshkova's systems since they launched, but as they approach Rann he perks up a bit. He was there during GIRL's first trip here, after all. He remembers the 'unicorn kitties' even if they turned out to be kind of dangerous. What will Rann offer up this time--?

    Evidently, yellow war zeppelins and missiles. Erk.

    Jamming frequencies is totally Cyborg's thing, so he responds to Natasha's command with a sharp nod, taps at something on his own wrist, and says, "Active defenses activated. Alanna, do you recognize them?"

Donna Troy has posed:
"Are those /actual/ Zeppelins?" Donna asks, a little incredulously, as the image appears on the screens. "First galleons, now zeppelins? This is turning into a strange trip."

    With Irie recovering her exertions, Donna has taken over point defense guns. She may not be a legit speedster, but Amazon reactions are still a thing to behold. While Natasha and Vic work the automated defenses, Donna does not hesitate to start knocking incoming missiles out of the sky.

    "Someone want to hail those guys and find out what the hell they're up to? And maybe at the same time Alanna can try seeing if she can raise her father on short-range comms, see if he's got any insight. Vic, anything you can tell us about those zeppelin things? I mean instead of using the guns, should I be going out there with my sword and puncturing them? 'Cos I don't mind doing that. I've never gone hand to hand with a zeppelin before."

    The rattle of gunfire goes on with barely a pause as Donna swings the turrets around, following the tracking data coming through from Natasha's console. "What kind of targeting they using, any way of telling yet? Might be an idea to fire a missile set to explode mid-way, give them a major heat source to lock on to?"

America Chavez has posed:
    One of the benefits of being able to transport almost literally anywhere is that things like distance, or space, or even time are little more than inconveniences for you. America doesn't need a reason to be somewhere. If she wants to go there and if it is possible to do so in any myriad of universes--she'll be there.

    rSometimes those reasons were more innocent than others--after all, not everything requires Earth shattering reasons for interdimensional (or in this case intergallactic) road trips. Sometimes you just need to get an answer to a question.

    The five pointed star appears near a space adjacent to GIRL's ship and reality shatters away to reveal the blue expanse of light beyond. Just in time for a missile to go through it. The dark-haired beauty that emerges carrying the missile, despite its propulsion systems still fully going, looks at the environment that she's found herself in. "Someone misplace their missile?" she asks before looking at the device and then at the zepplins. "Let me get it back to you, amigos! -Coher!-" she says before flinging the device back in the direction of one of the yellow zepplins and offering a wave to the ship.

    "-Hola-! Nadia!" she says merrily, despite the bombardment of missiles. "-Te estuve buscando-!" she adds in explanantion to her arrival. "Didn't expect to meet you in a firefight." Her distraction is just enough that one of the missiles impacts her she disappears beneath the wave of fire and smoke from the explosion.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Running all over the ship, Kaida moves from screen to screen peering at various readings for both the people on the ship, the life support systems, and also what she can see about what is going on out there. She scrambles over to stand near the front.

"Did we get the missiles ready? The hollow ones?" She asks and then looks in the direction of the enemy and clenches a fist.

"Get me over there and I'll rip one of those balloons from the sky!"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"Evasive maneuvers!" Caitlin shouts, reflexively. The team is moving like a well-oiled machine, everyone immedaitely to a station to render all the help they can possibly add. The redhead pulls full command from navigation to the helm and sends the vessel into a series of sharp and unpredictable loops. She takes advantage of the countermeasures to not just avoid objects, but set the gunnery team up to interdict the missles or even take shots at the war zeppelins.

The ship shudders violently. "We're skipping off the atmospheric shell," she announces. "Stabilizers at seventy-five. Val, what am I up against here?" Caitlin shouts over her shoulder, and pitches the vessel into a barrel roll that pulls up into what would be a 10g+ turn were it not for their inertial dampners.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    There are many reasons AIM wanted to steal the Tereshkova from the GIRL Expo, even if their real target was the Zeta emitters, chief among them being it is one of the advanced vessels ever put together on Earth. The shields manage to hold as more power is routed from the miniature star that powers the ship thanks to Shuri's vibranium sorcery. Many of the additional incoming missiles are further taken out by the Tereshkova's point defenses and evasive maneuvers. Even if they are war zeppelins, they're still zeppelins and relatively slow and ponderous compared to the state of the art ship. Why AIM keeps using them, nobody is really sure.

    "Wait I've seen those before! Those look like the AIM war zeppelins that attacked the expo!" Nadia cries standing up from her chair and pointing at the screen. It's basically a confirmation of everything they suspected, AIM has somehow reverse engineered the stolen emitter and used it to get to Rann. Not only that, it seems that AIM has come in force relocating a sizable amount of their military assets.

    "We have to get to Ranagar!" There is an edge of panic to Alanna's voice, even as she works at trying to establish communication with Ranagar. "It's no good, those airships must be jamming us!"

    And then as if the mix wasn't chaotic enough already, America Chavez appears. "Hi, America!" The ship's external speakers broadcast for Nadia as she views her on the main screen. "We're kind of busy at the moment being shot at by AIM, but nice to see you!"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanoff would call out, "Insufficient data. Just send everything at them." In the case of not knowing exactly the capacity, the equivalent of 'throwing the kitchen sink at it' electronically was a viable tactic. Better burning out a great deal of electronics rather than having the ship shot up and blasted out of the sky. "Block all frequencies." She goes to rapidly start doing a system search over for known weapon loadouts of AIM anti-air launchers, and moves to rapidly download them to the other consoles in the chaotic cockpit.
    As up to date as SHIELD's last engagement notes were on the matter, at least. Which for AIM something weeks old could be an ancient relic.
    Natasha is rapidly calculating interception trajectories, leaving it to the others to take care of the gunnery and the exact standing of other countermeasures, like Donna's idea for decoys. Natasha goes to flick through the countermeasure board, going to rapidly start deploying chaff and flares, pocketing the horizon with detonating countermeasures and anything onboard deisgned for deployment to throw off trackers.
    "If this doesn't work they'll likely be sending up another volley so I suggest you pick out a landing vector -quickly- that has us beyond their horizon!" Because of -course- there would be more missiles.

Valeria Richards has posed:
Finally getting her wrist comp wired into the ships systems so she can at least get some display readouts going. She puts up a holographic visualisation. The girl jostled a bit as even with artifical gravity and inertial stabilizing. The inside of the ship doesn't always keep up.

She'd mostly been working on making sure the shields were up and running still, Shuri's side of the tech gelling pretty easily with Ricards and Doomtech. "Well Nadia just answered for us!" she points out while she makes sure the power being rerouted doesn't cause any extra problems for other systems. "One day it would be nice to take the lady out somewhere nice and she doesn't end up getting shot down!" she wishes aloud. The urge to snark a learned behavior from her uncles. And at least a couple aunts.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Let's give them something to think about," Donna says. Keeping up the firing with one hand, she draws her sword and holds it out to America. "Mac, wanna punch a hole to the side of one of a couple of those zeppelins and pierce the shells? I'm guessing they're going to find that pretty confusing. I doubt they're dumb enough to fly zeppelins which contain all the lift gas in a single cell so it won't go down, but they'll get an unexpected pressure loss which I'll bet they've got sensors enough to detect, and they won't know how we've done that. Might make them extra cautious. The two on the outsides of the formation, I suggest."

    There are a lot of missiles incoming to shoot at, but that doesn't mean the point defenses can't be aimed at the middle of the zeppelin formation for the occasional burst when it's convenient, so from time to time Donna pulls the turret controls over to lay down strafing fire in the direction of the Zeppelins themselves -- she's not going to risk any missiles getting through so it's more about throwing some covering fire in their direction than attempting to hit anything vital, aiming to break up the attack more than to shoot anything down.

    "Lighter than air vehicles are always going to be slow and somewhat unstable. Maybe fly straight /through/ them when there's a break in the oncoming?" Donna suggests. "With the speed this thing can do even in the atmosphere we should be able to close in on them in no time, and the shockwave will scatter them and force them to spend time righting their positions to continue fire. Might give us time to get clear before they have a chance to even turn around."

Victor Stone has posed:
    "They definitely wouldn't expect you going out there and taking them on directly!" Cyborg says this to Donna and Kaida both while he fiddles with the systems. "They're awfully slow, like Donna says, you could fly circles around them. But I think if we can just target something at them properly... oh, hey, America!"

    He switches his focus to trying to cut through whatever's jamming their transmissions. "I think the jamming's coming from /that/ zeppelin," he points out. "If we can take that one out we might at least be able to get a message through. Or, y'know, we can just take them all down."

America Chavez has posed:
    As the smoke and flame dissipate from around the Utopian, two things are quite clear. One, America's wardrobe is as durable as she is herself. There's barely a scratch on her attire of tee-shirt, black leggings, and the star-patterned demin jacket she favors. A few sooty marks, but nothing near the amount of damage it should've sustained. Secondly, hit America Chavez with a missile is probably on the list of things one -doesn't- want to do. At least if that person wants to continue living without a great deal of pain.

    "I can see that" the interdimensional heroine says through teeth clenched in a vicious snarl. "While I appreciate the offer Donna," she says giving the Amazon a wink (sure she could get to the inside of the vessel without much effort (now that it's line of sight her accuracy would be on point), but why waste the opportunity to kick the dust off one of her own abilities that she hasn't used in quite some time, "I have my own blade right here," she says, giving her leg a double slap before flying forward through the volley at breakneck speeds.

    As she nears one of the zepplins she spins in mid-air and levels a kick to emptiness near one of the vessels. Usually the air directly before her is what falls away when she opens a star-portal, but that's a matter of convienience, not a necessity. In truth, she can direct them -into- solid objects; utilizing the unique skill to effectively slice through structures--or in this case objects--that would normally resist such offenses.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
"OK, so, no hollow missiles. Well, the hard way it is!" Kaida looks at a reading on a screen and looks back toward Cait and calling out to her.

"All life support systems are green! If you need more power, it is there!" And with that, she zips away. Where'd she go? Well, a brief alert would go off. Someone opened one of the air locks. Then something is in front of Cait. Crawling on all fours across the front of the ship is a mouse.

Ears, tail, and cape flickering and whipping, Kaida is clinging tight to one lip of plating. It is hard to tell of she's grinning or the wind is pulling at her mouth. Then, suddenly she is gone, flipping through the air till she snags hold of her cloak, whipping it wide and spinning this way and that. Her laughter lost to the wind.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    Another volley of missiles does indeed come for the Tereshkova, and more after that, but there are definitely gaps in the firing that can be taken advantage of.

    "Donna, America, Vic, can you keep them busy while we get the ship down to Ranagar? If you happen to knock them out of the sky in the process, all the better." Nadia asks as she continues helping reroute the power from the Pym Drive to increase the shields and weapon capabilities of the Tereshkova as much as possible. "Cait, see if you can get us down to Ranagar. We need to find out if the city is fallen!"

    "We may be able to link up with the Ranagar Defense Corps!" Alanna adds, though she has her own reasons to want to get to Ranagar as quickly as possible.

    If there is one thing AIM wasn't expecting to encounter on Rann it is an America Chavez, as she portal kicks the air, the slicing blade of pressure cuts through one of the balloons like a hot knife through butter causing the vessel to list sideways and collide with another as the entire formation begins to become disrupted, the war zeppelins however still remain aloft for now.

    At which point Caitlin takes the opportunity to punch the atmospheric thrusters, taking Donna's suggestion as the Tereshkova zips through the newly opened gap sending the zeppelin formation into even further disarray as the vessel sets course for the city of Ranagar.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It's a very, very difficult path on down. It's something that Natasha leaves to the pilot. She's not bothering to call out course corrections or anything. Just feeding as much sensor data as she can over to the helm while retracting bits of the ship behind panels to make it as aerodynamic as possible and to limit any sort of drag. It requires precise timing, particularly while they're being shot at and other things are exploding in the distance. It's a dangerous maneuver.
    So Natasha goes to simply take her stationa nd brace herself, feeding the data as best seh can to make rapid course corrections.

Valeria Richards has posed:
The doubleteaming of power systems should hopefully keep the Tereshkova in the air. "So think we should invest in some ablative armor on the hulls as well?" Val calls out to Nadia and Cait while she works.

"Okay got my forcefield linked in with the ship shields. Kinda like Nadia and Jan's Bee-Day. Should give us some extra mileage to soften ourt way to the ground. Then I can help do some proper repairs while anyone punchy can go punch beekeeprs!" she suggests a possible plan for landing.

Victor Stone has posed:
    Cyborg nods to Nadia and gets up, leaving the task of battling the zeppelins in electronic ways to someone else. He hurries over to one of the airlocks, joining Kaida and America out in the atmosphere. Flight is easy for the chrome Titan, boosters in his shoes letting him sail out into the air and head for one of the confused zeppelins.

    He pulls up short a little ways from the big yellow blimp and puts out one hand, targeting the shell. He fires the sonic cannon on his hand at the zeppelin, sending out a concussive wave of force that masquerades as sound. It won't cut through the zeppelins as neatly as America's kick, but it'll be pretty effective for taking them down.

Donna Troy has posed:
    "So..." Donna says, getting up from the console and giving the overworked point defense cannon time to cool down a bit. "I'm not worried about Kaida versus a Zeppelin, but I am worried about how she gets back to us after she's finished beating up a zeppelin." She flashes a bright grin to Nadia and a wink to Caitlin, and as the Tereshkova blasts free of the Zeppelins, she joins Vic in exiting the ship via the airlock.

    "You guys make your way to the city to land, we'll join you there!" she calls back just before the airlock cycles.

    She accompanies Vic as they close in on the formation, breaking away when he stops to line up his shot, plummeting downwards almost to the ground and then swooping back up to assault on of the zeppelins from below -- not as earlier suggested going hand-to-hand but rather launching herself like a missile, up into the body of the zeppelin somewhere a little way behind the gondola and coming again above it, a huge hole torn into the side.

    <<Kaida!>> she calls into comms. <<When you're done beating up your zeppelin, just drop off and glide, I'll come catch you.>>

America Chavez has posed:
    "Take that!" America shouts as the zepplin formation begins to falter and fail. She grabs another missile from the sky and redirects it off course before it impacts someone or something vital. "I'll make sure the Mightest Mouse is safe and secure after she wrecks these fools." Another missle is portalled to another dimension where it can't harm anyone she cares about and considers family.

    She swoops in near to Donna and Vic. "Nice shot, big guy!" she compliments Vic and his sonic cannon. "Remember the Sandworm?" she says to Donna, "think the same can be done with these blimps?" she asks the Amazonian with a grin.

Kaida Connolly has posed:
Finally, Kaida stops spinning and appears to be gliding on her cloak toward one of the Zepplins until she gets close enough and she foregoes her cloak, letting it go. As she turns into a tiny missile...

Inside the bridge of the zeppelin, the AIM troops move carefully about. Everyone at their stations. The captain of the Zeppelin points toward a neighboring one and he is about to give an order when he hears a thunk to his right. He looks over and sprawled against the glass is a mouse that looks like she got hit by the zeppelin mid flight.

Of course, this would only be a mild concern if not for the fact that in her right hand is a sword sharpened by Amazonian smiths. It is hilt deep in the glass and while it is only about 3 inches long, it is just long enough to get through the glass and a crack slithers away from the puncture point. He gets up, walking over to get a closer look and blinks behind his mask. He pauses when he realizes the mouse is not only grinning but also twisting the blade left and then right.

As another crack and then another forms, he grabs for a weapon while declaring that people get to arms but then the glass breaks and as it all falls down, he loses track of the mouse.

A moment later, someone behind him cries out in pain.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    With the Tereshkova's shields boosted and firing tradjectories predicted, flares and chafe are jettisoned out behind as the Tereshkova emerges from the other side of the zeppelin formation and guns its engines for Ranagar, visible in the distance, with Caitlin at the helm.

    Once Donna steps out, Nadia begins multitasking between the engineering console and the now vacant weapons station as she sends a couple of special surprises, EMP warheads, back towards the zeppelins; the resulting pulses frying all of the onboard electronics over a wide radius. Not that it will take them out of the sky, that's what friends are for.

    Cyborg's sonic cannon cuts through another gas cell further disrupting the formation as another zeppelin lists awkwardly, not designed to withstand that sort of attack. Another collision between the damaged zeppelin and another nearby along with the incoming electromagnetic pulses results in a series of small explosions in one of the gondolas, as another the pair of zeppelins smash into each other. Smoke trails from one of the two as it begins a not so controlled descent.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Now it's time to stabilize their descent as they're dropping. Natasha's moving over to the co-pilot station as she's working now at helping to control the fall. Extending various flaps from the craft quickly to help stabilize the trajectory. She works silently as her fingers fly over the control console, occasionally going to access secondary systems to pick up data. She's eerily calm over about this as she keeps a secondary track of the melee-a-zepellin as AIM bags of hot air go up in flames.
    It's a gasser.

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna hovers in the air a moment close to America, while watching the sheer destruction the crew has wrought on the hapless AIM soldiers in their -- let's be honest about this -- rather flimsy airships.

    Never bring a zeppelin to a space-ship fight. Especially if the spaceship is full of superheroes.

    She turns to America, grinning wide. "I mean," she begins, looking amused. "If you want to /rub it in/ Mac," she laughs, holding her sword out again in case America really does want to peel a zeppelin wide open. "But honestly these guys look pretty finished to me. None of them are in a condition to fight, and there are a couple that look like they may be about to crash. Maybe we should do something about that."

    Sure enough, Donna turns from human missile tearing holes through zeppelins into human aircraft engine as she swoops down on the Zeppelin that's plummeting to the ground, gets beneath the gondola and then comes up again, much more slowly this time, to take its weight and slow the descent of the doomed vehicle. On board the panicking crew are relieved but hardly reassured when the approaching ground starts to approach at a significantly less fatal speed.

    When the zeppelin reaches twenty or so feet from the ground, Donna lets it go and flies back out from under to rejoin the others. In normal Amazonian fashion she'll try to save even enemies who's opened fire on her, but she's certainly not averse to having them badly knocked around by the experience.

Victor Stone has posed:
    With his targeted zeppelin down and the others being brought out of the sky, Cyborg nods once and then flies in to do his own part in making sure the AIM crew of said zeppelin doesn't crash right into the ground. Some of them might not have done much aside from joining a terrible organization. Maybe they can change.

    Maybe not, but generally speaking Vic's right there with Donna on trying to save people's lives if possible. So he takes the gondola and lowers it gentle to the ground before heading back to the spaceship. There are so many questions to be answered once they can actually get properly landed!

America Chavez has posed:
    America gives it a few more moments to let the bee keepers of AIM consider their immenent demise and firing death before she rolls her eyes and flies to intercept one of the falling zepplins. She positions herself before its trajectory and stomps her foot on thin air. The fabric of reality shatters in the shape of a massive Star Portal, just large enough to allow the zepplin to pass through it and to the ground perhaps 20 feet beyond the portal's shimmering maw.

    She smirks as she moves to slow the terminalk velocity of the vessel before allowing it to pass through. Once its clear of the portal and on the ground she turns to Donna. "So... care to ask Nadia if she wants to join my crew once we're finished here?" she asks the leader of the Titans. If America is anything she's determined and consistent. Besides, nothing like recruitment pitches during intergalactic peace keeping missions, right? "By the way," she adds, "anyone got a bead on our Mightiest Mouse? I lost her after the glass on..." she points to one of the zepplins, "that one shattered inward."

Kaida Connolly has posed:
One of the last Zeppelins to fall also comes down in a controlled fall. It comes skidding to a halt, lightly slamming into the ground. The ground crevices with the impact, parting like water before the momentum of the massive object. A few moments later, a man in a beekeeper suit comes out the front of it, stumbling over the lip of a window and screeching as he slaps and beats himself as he runs. He hits his side then his own head and then his hip and then his leg before finally he spins around once and falls to the ground. A moment later his helmet pops off and the unconcious man's face is revealed covered in just all kinds of tiny little cuts.

Strutting out of the helmet, Kaida casually rests a hand on the sheathed hilt of her blade while she looks at her tiny little claws on her hands. She then looks at the guy and gives him a tiny kick before she continues onward. From inside the bridge? There's a lot of groaning and crying. If anyone looks inside, every member of the bridge is in varying states of injury, pain, and/or unconsciousness.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
    As the more independent flight capable members of the GIRL and their Titan allies force the remaining AIM war zeppelins from the skies of Rann, the Tereshkova streaks towards the city of Ranagar already visible in the distance.

    It is a testament to the feats of engineering and materials that went into building the Tereshkova that the vibranium and tricarbotanium alloy panels bear only scant singe marks where some of the kinetic energy from the missile barrage did manage to get past the shields. Even then much of the energy having been absorbed and repurposed by the ship's innovative design.

    The spires of the City-State of Ranagar, Rann's defacto capitol and the largest surviving city from the time before the great atomic wars destroyed much of the planet. Compared to GIRL's last visit though the outer defenses of the city look pock marked and battle scarred as if the city as seen recent battle. Also new is that while the Tereshkova is not fired upon, the city's weapons do track its approach and a contingent of the Ranagar Defense Corps with jetpacks and sky skiffs intercepts the approach and escorts the ship's landing.

<<Tereshkova, we will guide you in.>> The translated voice of the Defense Corps commander's voice comes over the comms. <<Please understand we will need to verify your identities upon landing. Please disarm all weapons systems and await boarding.>>

<<Understood. We are here to help.>> Nadia has a few guesses as to the reasons for the heightened security and sees no reason not to comply.

    Escorted by the Ranagar Defense Corps the Tereshkova touches down in the remains of the old spaceport in the city's outskirts. Clearly much has transpired here since the GIRLs' last visit, but that's exactly why they are here.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Given they were alreayd met with being blasted from the sky, Natasha Romanoff is rather wary. But still, the city is under seige and it was not exactly done of their own initiative. "Very well. I understand." Of course Natasha will be going in armed to the teeth.
    And hopefully in ways that even the enhanced scans of the security systems on Rann would not be able to pick up the rather numerous items and weapons hidden on her. When they boarded and swept.
    It was part of how she lived her life and it would not change. She would not let herself be taken anywhere unarmed. Even with the Red Room training of making everything a weapon. As the Tereshkova goes in to land,s he would muse over to Nadia.
    "We'll require an emergency way to extract ourselves or give us equipment just in case. Can you quickly shrink some things for us to take with us?" Natasha's the practical and pragmatic one. If AIM intercepted them once, then AIM might as well be in the city. They need to defend themselves. They had a few moments before boarding, so if Nadia saw the need for it, enough time hopefully for her to shrink something down.
    "Much has changed here. And what brings AIM here?" She taps the side of her cheek in thought. A very un-Natasha like mannerism.