Maybe she was a demon. If nothing else it was true that she never felt as alive as she did when she was hunting huntresses. For all the opinions of the machine gods, the voices of ancients telling her what she was made for, she could at least agree that she was made for this.

Their instincts were beautiful. The way they prowled. The way they sought height even in the void. The way their eyes widened and they shifted in anticipation as they prepared their pounce. The spectacular high-energy acrobatics that could follow that motion. Their native approach had conquered their origin rainforests and they trusted in it even here, in metal giants beneath alien suns. 

And they all... almost all... refused to learn what instincts made a good Zaldarian.

Her dodge is too fast. Her mech is too light. The Aeteline is missing tonnes of weight. The massive, shoulder-mounted missile racks are empty. Their ordinance fills the forest, lying in wait for the signal -

For a Hybrasilian, a forest meant concealment, safety, food, danger. To a Zaldarian it was a fuel source.

Pyrex explosives detonated and the newly built rainforest became an ocean of fire.

Maybe she was a demon. She certainly looked like it as she came out of her spin igniting her neon pink laser sword, black carapace illuminated by the tide of hellfire. Her blade was broken, distorted, diffused, and as she settled her weight on her incongruous crab leg it blazed to three times the length it should be, outreaching the Supernova's spear by more than double. By reducing the coherency of the beam she sacrificed its cutting edge and turned it into a continuous damage weapon, rapidly heating the enemy mech in a situation where it could not vent coolant into the atmosphere. The temperature would soon start to spike even inside the Supernova's cockpit unless she started cutting back on combat functions to overclock life support. Solarel was basking in the warmth like a salamander, energy bleed resulting in continuous, rapid motions that were mirrored in the Aeteline. She'd never seemed so fast as she was now.

> How long are your legs?
> Exactly?

[Defy Disaster: [b]11[/b]]