Skylar looked at Mei and reached up, about to take her hand so she could help him up, when he noticed movement marked on his HUD in the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see one of the tanks training it’s gun on her specifically, and since the shell that was loaded was likely one with an explosive charge of some sort for multi-purpose use, the shot would kill him too. He didn’t hesitate, and fired the thrusters of his jump kit, and tackled Mei just as the tank fired. He watched light fill the barrel before the shell slipped clear of the muzzle. His actions carried them out of the path of the shell, but not out of the path of the coaxial machine gun, which opened fire as soon as the gunner noticed that he’d missed, and sprayed rounds through the air in a burst of thirty-six rounds.<br/><br/>Skylar, with his body blocking Mei’s torso, took twelve rounds to the back, three to his buttocks, two to his right thigh, and another to the left while two rounds bounced off his helmet. His torso armor absorbed ten of the rounds that hit his back while the last two penetrated, one slipping between his ribs and perforating his left kidney, spleen, and left lung, and then passed through his left breast after smashing through a rib and stopped against the back of his chest plate, while the other punched a hole through and shattered his right shoulder-blade and the deformed slug smashed into two of his ribs and shattered them as well before stopping in his right breast. Mei however only took two rounds, as Skylar had absorbed a majority of the burst, only taking a round to the back of her right thigh while the other grazed her hip. The remaining eight rounds missed, the first three having fallen short, while the others overshot.<br/><br/>Skylar, upon feeling the impacts on his armor grunted, and then felt the pain and internal damage a split second before his hit the ground, upon which he cried out and immediately coughed up blood into his helmet after his first breath from the scream. However, he steeled himself, and pulled out his detonator, and squeezed the trigger, causing the four tanks to erupt into fireballs in unison. Then he passed out from the pain, the detonator and his rifle clattering to the ground, his left arm still wrapped around Mei’s torso. From that point, Mei could hear radio chatter filling his helmet at a deafening level, as well as an armor mounted comm device that crackled to life with a frantic  cry of<span style="color: #FF40FF"><span style="font-style: italic">“Daddy!”</span></span>