Academy City's unofficially formed armored unit began invading the old city of Avignon from outside its walls.
Their primary equipment was the HsPS-15, aka the "Large Weapon". It was a powered suit developed using all the best Academy City technology.
The powered suit was a new Academy City weapon that covered the body in armor that looked like a Western suit of armor. The joints were moved using electric power and the flesh-and-blood human inside was given mobility anywhere from twice normal to dozens of times normal.
They came in various standard sizes and levels of firepower, but the ones here were giant masses of metal 2.5 meters tall.
The suits had blue and gray camouflage on them and the robot-like "armor" had two arms and two legs and the arms had 5 fingers each. However, if you asked someone whether the powered suits were "human-like", you would be told "no". The "head" area was huge. It may have been because the chest armor was so thick, but it looked like the suits had one of the drum-shaped security robots on their heads. There was no neck. The "head" was directly connected to the chest, but it could still rotate.
There was a great sound of something hard being crushed.
It was the sound of the armored legs stepping on the rubble as they advanced.
The stone paving and the ruins of the bricks had both survived for hundreds of years, but they were so easily crushed now.
The hands of the powered suits held special guns that had barrels so wide they looked misshapen.
The guns looked like large rifles made by forcibly shortening the barrel of a tank's main gun, but they were actually quite different. They were anti-barrier revolver shotguns.
The shells used in those guns were special. Inside a single shell were a few dozen bullets that would usually be classified as anti-materiel. Each shot could blow straight through a tank and at close range a few shots could force open the door to a nuclear shelter. Usually, the barrel wouldn't hold up to the explosive force of the gunpowder, but, by delicately controlling the type and arrangement of the gunpowder, the direction of the explosive force could be controlled so that the lowest possible amount of damage was given to the barrel and the greatest possible amount of destructive force was released.
The few dozen powered suits headed for the castle walls surrounding Avignon while holding this large weapon that had been developed for the purposes of breaking through the thick door of a shelter an enemy might be hiding inside.
"Commence invasion."
A mere two words.
As that voice spoke, the anti-barrier shotguns fired. Each time the pump-action-like slide was pulled the revolver cylinder turned.
In an instant, the stone walls that had restricted people's entrance and exit to and from the city for hundreds of years were blown away like they were made of paper.
The powered suits stepped over the rubble and entered the old city of Avignon.
The artificial legs moved much more smoothly than a real human's would have.
They found the youths of Avignon who had been rioting shortly before.
Those youths were not enveloped in pure fear or pure rage. This had been so sudden that they had been unable to sort out their feelings. This left them shaking in a whirlpool of mixed emotions.
On the other hand, the response of the powered suits was completely uniform.
They moved the wide barrels of their anti-barrier shotguns that had blown through the castle walls in a single shot and aimed them directly at the flesh-and-blood humans before them.
A voice gave a short report to its companions over the radio.
"Enemy forces spotted."