"Do you understand why I lured you here to begin our battle?"

Mirror's voice is cool and silken, but her body is becoming more animated by the second. Without even spurring her Nine-Tails into action, the number of buttons she pushes in a second has close to doubled. The motion of her eyes has intensified until trying to watch her watch her equipment is nausea inducing. Her frown of concentration is deep and in constant whisker flickering motion. She is, in a word, excited. The full force of her piloting talents are about to come to the fore.

"It was for this moment."

She reaches the Gods-Smiting Whip's hand forward and snatches the spiraling sword out of the air. As its fingers close around the weapon, chaos breaks loose. Tails One, Five, and Seven all ignite at the same time, forming three hovering plasma blades that sweep the air in front of and behind her in large, sweeping waves as if she were surrounded by the bends of a brook, or else dancing in a whorl of petals made entirely of light. The artistry is nearly a match for the technical prowess of it all, though there is too much of brute force in her motions to be something of true beauty. 

The difference between a painter's brushes and a knight's sword. Between a dancer on a pole and a beast unleashed on its prey. Admirable to an extent. Aesthetically interesting, even. But even the flourishes are born out of practicality; the brutality and killing intent at the end of every slashing sweep are too apparent for her dance to earn her praise from a wider audience. No one would ever dare sing a song about her fighting. Not her victories or her defeats. This is one more truth behind the label of the One Day Defender.

"I have watched every one of your matches in preparation for today. You fight as a Huntress. Fight. You do not duel as one, but treat with every opponent as if they were one of the great beasts of Hybrasil. Even now, I am hunted."

Mirror's tail blades stab at the ground in a wave pattern, constantly rising and falling and burning new holes in the ground as she directs them this way and that. The Jackals close in around her, and she strikes. Small arms fire splashes against the frenzied shields of the suddenly active Tails Three and Eight, which lift up without warning at the last possible instant. The footwork of the Gods-Smiting Whip is sublime. And horrible. Like a monster, she stomps into the path of these brave servants of the Goddess Smokeless Jade Fires. She risks their teeth. Risks their distraction. Risks their leading her into more prepared traps.

And where she steps, the piercing rainfall of Tailblades follows. Impaling, rising, falling again and impaling once more. Strike after strike after strike, well beyond the point of overkill once her two new tails switch to offense and join the assault themselves. With five of them at once she has become a storm. Not even a dancer or a beast but a force of nature that reduces everything around it to dust and rubble.

"I used the width of your net against you," even now her voice is smooth and composed, even playful, "I drew the fastest piece to me and clipped its claws before I could be overwhelmed. I turned a sprawling maze's worth of attack vectors into a tiny handful, all of which I control. And I ensured  that if I only stand in this single, specific place, my back could not be taken."

Her sword slams into the spine of a Jackal and lifts it bodily into the air. The Whip twirls in the center of a wave of hot death and she launches the machine like a shot from a cannon into another one. Thrusters burn, she rises just barely in time over a lunge from Dolly and Jade. The heat from her takeoff melts the glass of the fallen skyscraper into a molten slag that threatens to catch their feet fast if they are not careful.

But only here do her blades not fall heavy. This the eye of the hurricane, where no malice reaches. Mira and her Nine-Tails land lightly in a place of safety, where her tails start scarring the battlefield anew.

"Nine Drive System, Partial Configuration. The Third Form: The Forest of Fangs. That is a second of my sacred techniques I have exposed for your sake. The same number I gifted Solarel. I commend you for pushing me thus: you are the first to disable one of my Tails. And you shall be the last. You may take this crown and call it glory if you like, though it comes attached to defeat."

Her tails flit about her shoulders, no longer baring their blades but still threatening with the potential of their basic gun barrel configuration. Mira's sword slashes three times at Jade and Dolly's idol, precise and careful cuts that cause no pain as they damage superficial systems. She is slicing open the sacred dancing costume of a Bride, opening it further and turning it into something that [i]she[/i] finds thrilling.

She sniffs. Just under the kiss of these teasing strokes is the threat of something far worse, if it is only stepped into.

"Call me a trickster if you must. Act aggrieved or benevolent, if that is what gives you the strength to fight. But I. Am. A. [i]Knight.[/i] And I have shown you, for the first time in your lives, what it means to be taken seriously on a battlefield. That is the extent of the gift I can offer the pair who proved to me that I can trust to love in the place that I must reach. A place where skill and technology will only last me a single, paltry day."

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