"Heim Stockar. Unideal opponent."

War heroes. Interesting the way they were almost exclusively Zaldarian. Wars of conquest, more glamorous than wars of defense. Though 'conquest' was the incorrect word for it, of course. In the end no territory was claimed. Resources, cats, trophies. These stolen in abundance. Herself included. Fisher colonies and fringe planets bore the brunt of the losses. Mother Hybrasil sent her huntresses roaming, but never took a blow herself. There were entire swaths of Worlders out there who knew nothing at all of the conflict except from rumors and dramatizations. 

...Anyway. Even among the mighty Huntresses there were few [i]heroes[/i]. Most were held back in reserve, or ritual, or... repose. Total lack of interest, higher priorities, an absolute certainty of eventual superiority. Eventually, arguably, that last one was even proven true. Certainly the increasingly stalled raiding lines were a critical importance in opening the negotiations between the two cultures that settled into an uneasy peace. But the damage was done. So to speak. Fisher cats came home by the netful with stories of life as a raid prisoner to rebuild their lives and their colonies, only to find their old communities had built around them in their absence, and that the empty rooms left open in hopes of their return were the only spaces that had been left for them at all.

War heroes. What a ridiculous concept. There was no beauty in [i]war[/i]. Conflict. The duel. A thousand knives burning with the passion of a single heart set against the lance and whip of a lover. In war the lines became messy, the intimacy was lost. Even for Mirror with her roaming interests the entire scene became impossibly muddled and boring. No one to love. No one to lover her back.

No one, except...

"Priority shift. Reducing emphasis on research and information gathering to naturally occurring results. I am. Grateful. For the Chains. Trosta, Mattara. This might be impossible otherwise."

What a miserable draw. Another war hero, this one not disgraced. A perfectly prominent citizen of the Empire. A defensive specialist, a waiter. A planner. Schemer. A (sigh) male. A boring opponent, were he not so intimidating. She would almost be tempted to forfeit the match immediately to preserve what few of her secrets she could and deny him the honor. But she can't. Not against Heim Stockar. Not against a hero.

There are many reasons. The most obvious of which is her new limiter system, which needed adjusting to if she was ever going to be able to Carve the Waterfall, the way she planned. But this was also the least important. Many ways to overcome that particular deficit. Simply trying harder in the match after this one was an option. Lab testing was another. Better than both was using the normal recovery time to jump to another nearby system and perform active combat field testing, away from prying eyes to the maximum degree possible. This would, in fact, be ideal. But. But.

But Matty would be watching. For the first time, she would be paying special attention to Mirror's match and hoping with that obnoxiously adorable wishing heart of hers for Mommy to win. Even just imagining the look on her face after being dragged out of the wreckage of the Gods-Smiting Whip was enough to break Mirror's resolve in an instant. Tch. Kids. She [i]told[/i] Slate over and over again that she never wanted any. Damn it.

But even that obstacle could be overcome, overpowered, crushed down and conquered for the sake of practicality and planning. If only the opponent was not Heim Stockar. Because she had just defeated Solarel. Because...

Because nothing was worth staining that victory. Staining the ultimate warrior's reputation with some petty transitive property bone-shard nonsense. Mirror might play off a tactical retreat here as part of her moves and countermoves, just one more feint as part of a deeper play in the great game.

But an opponent that history holds as on a level with Solarel must be destroyed. Must, in fact, be crushed outright, until history held only one such name for the rest of time. Only her. Only Solarel. The mark of the One-Day Defender burns across Mirror's soul: when it came to the champions of Zaldar, there could be no quarter.

By now, she will have recovered from the loss of the [i]Bezorel[/i]. How, exactly, was a matter of impossible speculation. One could only hope she'd at least done better than scraping together more mafia debts to purchase another rusted Teranian trash bucket. It had been the plan to defeat her soundly. To erase her broken body thoroughly and easily before disappearing into the stars with a wink and a kiss. 

It. Had been. The [i]plan.[/i] To secure Solarel's next armor herself. To hunt down an appropriately beautiful body for the most beautiful warrior ever written into the story of the stars, and deliver it to her in dramatic last second timing. She'd had no leads on any, but at the time her confidence in her ability to pull it off without compromise in the allotted time had been supreme. 

And then she'd gone and nearly lost. And then she'd gone and retreated inside herself. Selfishly. Disgustingly. Unacceptably. There had been no gift. There had been no flowers and no anime. There had been no night of ecstasy and final culmination of their beautiful dance. Instead she had retreated into the shadows to lick her matted fur and wrap new defenses around herself to prevent a hurt that even in the moment turned her on just to remember the sensation. All her plans shattered in the name of simple self improvement.

But because of that, she'd met. No. No. Fuck that, no.

"Final diagnostics, all systems green. I am bound by chains of love, and love shall set me free. Slate, call out my activations as you see them. Goal: reach a level where I notice a shift before you can. Victory or death. Victory... or death."

She could only make it all mean something if she defended the title of Strongest, while she held it. There would be times and places where she might do that while still recording what would officially be called a 'loss', but not here. Not against this man. For her sake. She would rise as high as the battle demanded.