With no friendlies left in the AV room, there is no need for Lilly to remain there, particularly when Sweetpea is still cooling down and Lilly’s own nerves are frazzled from that weird ray gun. She ducks out of the smoky room, back into the hallway to the port side.
Lilly and Spikey move door-to-door through wartorn Augustgrad, making their way past toppled statues of Mengsk as they seek out UED boltholes. The process is simple: kick open a door, take out the fascists, move on. They reach one door that particularly resists them, though. Boots do not work, nor do bullets or spines. Other clean-up crews are circulating through the area, and Lilly waves down the first firebat she sees. His solution is elegant in its simplicity: burn down everything around the door, and its steel-reinforced nature will no longer matter.
Lilly chooses her position to put whoever comes out of the AV room between her and Malorn, but even better would be if the way was barred. She slides the door shut, but there is nothing convenient nearby with which to block it. Maybe gunk it up? Hard candy and pink ribbon will not cut it for that. Too bad Imogen’s lugging around the tool kit. That would certainly be handy right now, but her partner is already way down the hallway. Aiden has lagged behind a bit though, and when he sees Lilly scoop up some nearby debris and start shoving it in the door mechanism to jam it, he joins her to lend a hand. With it as secured as they can quickly make it, he takes off down the hall after Imogen.
The door does not hold as long as Lilly would like, but when it does burst open, the pirate with the ray gun stumbles forward with the force of his blow, ending sprawled on the decking right in front of Lilly. She takes a step back, further portside, and brings up Sweetpea. The laser bores a hole through the prone man’s back, and his lightweight armor catches fire from the heat. The pirate screams and rolls, trying to put the flames out. Lilly loses sight of him when his flailing takes him back into the AV room, but the threats from that quarter are not yet over. That marine from earlier clomps to the doorway with a shout of, “Gang way! Coming through!” He looks quite pissed now, having been forced to discard his broken gauss rifle and replace it with his backup sidearm, a paltry pistol. Lilly instinctively jerks Sweetpea up in front of her, though the laser gun is not cool enough to fire yet. His shots hit it instead of Lilly, setting it sparking.
Lilly has got a pistol, too, and she draws it now, firing right back at him from the scant cover the sides of the hallway provide. The weaker parts of the power armor, the joints, take some damage from the bullets, but this approach is not nearly having the effect she would like. She falls back, further portside, hoping to lure the marine out into the hall for a nice clean shot with Sweetpea. Or better yet, Malorn and Aiden can do their can-opener maneuver on him. It seems to be working out for them further down the hall.