Anarion

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

Ivy tilts her head to think, towards the cybernetic side. This could just be a habit from her childhood, perhaps mimicking a pet. Or perhaps it’s a subconscious shift towards the digital side of herself, taking advantage of the powers of memory and categorization where an implant like hers most excels.

After a few moments, she nods, more to herself than to you. “This has been a most enlightening experience. Thank you for receiving me, Solarel. As a representative of the boatmen, please consider your request for forgiveness of your debt granted.” She makes a few notes on the lawsuit demand letter near the top, explaining their offer. No extra pay to you, but also no intent on their part to pursue any further engagements against you. If that’s acceptable, you can sign it as well and file the papers and it will conclude the matter as far as any TC court is concerned.

“Hmm, I think I can follow up in two days on this. Please do try and be around to receive us.”

In two days time, there will be an arrival at your hangar. A Zaldarian priestess will be presenting herself (or letting herself in if you’ve chosen to be absent), wearing formal robes indicating that she’s from an advance outpost associated with Zathar. Zathar, you would recall, is one of the direct jumps from Zaldaria, but the route goes through several more or less empty star systems before getting to anything other than Styx and the Boatmen have presented themselves as both non-threatening offensively and dangerous to prod too hard, so it has become something of a backwater compared to the routes leading towards the Cerulean Belt or Hybrasil. You might call it a neglected part of the empire. If the empress wished, she could pay it close attention, but neither of the last two has had such a wish, so they’ve mostly been left to themselves to pursue their own goals.

The priestess will be accompanied by two crews. One will be a small contingent of three Zaldarians, her personal retinue from the looks of them, sporting various shades of bronze and rust in their coloration. The other will be a larger crew of ten Styx Boatmen, most with various level of cyborg implants and accompanied by Ivy in an observational role.

How will you greet them, either upon their arrival or whenever you return to find them there?

***

Dolly

When you do get inside the shuttle, the Banders laugh and cheer. There are five of them. Erys is not present. But you’ve got Valynia, the Terenian, and three other Hybrasilians. Before you have any chance to “brain” anybody, you’re shoved roughly against the shuttle walls and then buckled in by Valynia. She then wraps a short corded rope around the belt latch a few times and knots it, to make tampering with it impossible without being very obvious.

“Thank you for being such a good girl for us, priestess.” She smiles and the others laugh. “I should thank you, too, for such a good fight. Erys has right of first refusal among our little band, but since she didn’t actually win her match, she got knocked out of the running and I got to pick you up. And I’m so very happy about that.”

She leans in close and gives your ear a nip with her sharp teeth. If you wanted, you could take a moment here, much as Angela did with you earlier. Swing the purse up, get in one solid hit. Of course, you’re also completely confident that she’ll punish you for it devastatingly afterwards. It might even reduce your odds of future escape if she takes away all your upper body mobility. But as a show of defiance, it’s absolutely possible.

However that part ends up going, you find yourself arriving in the pirate base after a short ride. There was no hyperjump, so this isn’t THE pirate base, but you can’t really tell where in the system you’re located since you couldn’t remark on the shuttle route while strapped inside. This makes sense if you think about it. Rumors are that the main station of the Red Band is inside the Alastar Nebula (In Hybrasilian, it’s called the River of Night), entirely out of reach of sensor scans unless somebody went into the right system and knew where to look.

Where you are is a small space station. It’s not hidden, exactly, just a bit off the main hyperlane entrance and exit routes. If you were to learn its name and look it up, you’d find that it’s simply registered as an observation station for solar sciences. A classic Hybrasilian activity, and one of several small private stations in a system that rapidly became populated in the last few years.

It does have some of those nice Red Band touches though. As you come out of the airlock, you find yourself greeted by a small jeering crowd, probably twenty or so, most of them Hybrasilian with a few more Terenians mixed in. No Zaldarians, the Red Band operates on the wrong side of the galaxy for them. The interior is luxurious. The shuttle bay isn’t large, but it’s got good equipment, the latest from Hybrasilian shipping, in fact. And once you’re pulled into the interior, there are real woven tapestries made of wool on some of the walls. Thefts most likely from Terenian shipping, the figures look generally Terenian and not Hybrasilian. Brazen to bring them all the way to this forward base, but then that’s entirely the point.

Valynia and her crew will march you in, down a corridor, and into a more normal room with a fairly large bed (though this is not custom, just a large bunk built into the wall. Once you’re there and strapped to the bed (more securely if you were defiant earlier), they’ll leave you with Valynia.

“You know, this ended up more like the cheap novels than I originally planned. I think that’s your goddess’s fault, all that threatening to steal souls. People take that seriously you know, it took us forever to do up the [Fist of Dishai] for that fight, but Erys absolutely insisted. Still it worked, didn’t it? She was fool enough to give you an opening for a winning strike and you didn’t take it, which let her get the draw. And now your, mm, your goddess can’t manifest in the world for the moment and you’re here with me. It would be a shame if you missed your next match, too, perhaps forfeited out of the tournament and let the Red Band advance instead. But we really would like to expand you know, Jacinta thinks it will be a grand adventure to found her own little dictatorship. And I think you would look perfect displayed as my bride for all the guests, instead of for your silly little goddess.”

She’s playing with you, enjoying the time together. She runs claws delicately along your leg, your arm, your exposed neck and up around the head as she’s speaking, taking every advantage of having you at her mercy.

Jade

Diagnostic information first. You know it instantly, sensors are all online. The state of your idol is good but not great. The right arm, which was mangled by Dishai, has been detached for repairs. There’s also still surface scouring and burn marks, dirt, debris. But overall the rest of the chassis is intact and power systems have been restored. Your cult properly prioritized bringing your consciousness back into the idol ahead of physical repairs and cosmetics.

When you look for Dolly, you will find very quickly that she’s not on-planet. Your link travels at lightspeed, so it will take you several panicked minutes to first reach her and anything you send will likewise be significantly delayed in time. She’s in the system, but somewhere far away from you. If you ask the crew, they’ll tell you that she went shopping, but if you check your link, it will not line up with the known locations of Akar Prime or Akar II based on the current timestamp.

What do you do?

[Please give Mirror her next prompt]

***

Isabelle

Quar does not call you during the night. She does at breakfast though. At first, there doesn’t appear to be an obvious reason, she just seems like she wants to eat with you. Or maybe that is the reason? That she expected to eat with her captor and was uncomfortable when brought food alone and while still bound.

She’d clearly like you to unbind her hands, which might also allow her to sign to you. Of course, you do need to consider that if you completely free her, she might escape unless you take precautions. Or maybe you don’t? It’s so hard to tell with her. But at any rate she gestures with her chin that she’d like to eat together, so you’ve got to decide how to handle that.

If you can read Zaldarian faces at all, you might even notice that she looks a little concerned for you. Is it that obvious how tired you look?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly

You slip from the dressing room wearing your new shirt. It’s a little long, but tight, close enough for your purposes, it outlines your body nicely.

When you come out of the rooms from the back, you find yourself in a tall aisle. Clothes on clearance are stacked up on both sides almost to the ceiling, older outfits and loose sweaters in bins on high shelves above the main racks. It’s a very confined shopping space, which might make you a bit uncomfortable as a Hybrasilian. But you just have to go through here to get to the main area and then you can take the lift up to the headdresses and scarves section, which Jade would love and that isn’t sacrilegious, probably.

In front of you, though, is a heavy Terenian woman with long black hair who was pushing a big shopping cart. She’s clearly not paying attention, as she’s pushed it down the narrow aisle and parked it sideways, totally blocking the whole space. It’s full of bags of clothes of all sorts, just kind of tossed in there without folding any of them. She’s busy digging into a line of dresses and hasn’t even noticed you. It would be rude to just barrel through her stuff, so of course you have to stop and say something to her.

But as you open your mouth, you feel the sudden soft press of a wad of cloth pushed tight against your tongue. “Shhhh” comes the voice of Valynia Bander, the Leopard who had so suddenly tackled you before. She whispers it into your ear, so close that you can feel the hot breath from between her sharp teeth tickle your ear.

Next she pulls the gag tight around your mouth, and then over that she passes a wide soft scarf of deep red, then loops it over your face and then down around your neck and behind your back. “I’m buying you a gift, priestess.” She gestures to all your bags, now dropped and scattered by your side. “Some of which you like so much that you just can’t help wearing it out of the store.” The hand on your back pulls firmly, the scarf tightening, pressing the gag into the wadded cloth she’d stuffed in your mouth further until you feel it against your cheeks. “And in gratitude, you’re going to come visit where my sisters and I are staying. Doesn’t that sound fun?” A hand slips around your waist, holds you close so you can’t go anywhere as the Terenian woman comes and helps pick up your bags for you. She’s grinning a wicked grin at your predicament as they march you through the store and towards the exit.

Jade

Such is the nature of power. The goddesses laugh at the game that was well-played. Some gossip to each other as they walk past the apple tree on their way to and from the Dreadful Houses, some look upon you with pity. As she is departing from the Houses, Irtana leans in close and says, just for you, “I hope you have learned this lesson well. The lesson of cunning if you wish to challenge stone.”

***

Solarel

Ivy takes the papers, looking less perturbed than you might have hoped. She comes in then, stepping past you to put the pile down on a table near the door so she can leaf through it properly, which she is of course permitted to do. She looks over the cover sheet, flips through a few sections, skips to near the back of the documents and reads the closing argument.

“An interesting argument” she says, looking up at you with that glowing blue eye and her regular Terenian brown one. There is the sound of amusement at the back of her throat. “Personally, I think the emotional distress line of argument is overplaying your hand though. The people of Styx aren’t going to be particularly sympathetic to that given how many of them have suffered at the hands of Zaldiarn raiders before this arena was established. We’ll chalk that one to differences between species though. And of course, the Boatmen are happy to forgive your debt, no need for months of blowhards shouting back and forth to sort that part out.

We had assumed, you see, that given your previous arrangements with us that you would have found yourself unable to secure a new mecha for competition, which was an obvious mistake on our part. Not mine, to be sure, I’ve read all about you and I had no doubt that you’d find a way into your match.” She laughs, a deep musical laugh, putting her cybernetic arm up to her mouth to suppress her chuckles.

“What a surprise though! I don’t think anyone has seen a Zaldarian mecha like the one you were piloting against the Antonius girl. The Kathresis, according to the registration information. Truly interesting. Which brings me to my proposition. You see, we can put this matter…” she gestures to the lawsuit “...behind us entirely, and you can secure additional support for any weapon retrofits that may be of interest to you. We’d simply like our technicians to be allowed to do the installation.”

Unspoken of course is that any installing technicians will also be able to get up close and personal to the Kathresis and will surely leave with pictures, schematics, and everything they can store in their memory, likely including cybernetic memory if Ivy is any indication. Still, this is a very good offer on her part. You’d have a crew, you’d have flexibility, and they’d be perfectly fine with any kind of trick or stratagem.

[The boatmen will spend their string here. What would it take for Solarel to agree to work with them and give them technical access to the Kathresis?]

***

Mirror

Matty scampers off with a squeak and a blush, heading for the cockpit. You don’t see, but Slate does, that she turns around before diving in and looks back at you. It’s not disapproving, or really any emotion. It’s just looking, taking in the situation, trying to gauge how you’re feeling. It’s a look that says that she knew how rough you were feeling, and that she’s still trying to get to know you better, and maybe that she’s a little worried. She only looks for a moment though and then she’s in and pulling readings for Trosta.

The rest of the crew gets to work as well, looking over the spots that were burnt or melted, the dings of the metal, any scouring near the tails from the repeated energy discharge. It absolutely wouldn’t do for one of the key components to give out during a match and they know it.

Once she’s surveyed that everything is in motion, Slate takes you to the breakroom. “Goddess, that was a hell of a shot. I know it’s probably eating you up inside in all sorts of ways and that’s fair. But at least take it from me, that looked godsdamn spectacular and I know, more than anybody, what kind of reflexes were needed to take it. Absolute hell of a shot, boss.”

She’s here if you want to talk about the ‘I told you sos’ and the ‘oh fines’ but she’s not going to push it. If you want some alone time, this might be a moment to just think about dresses without anything else pressing on you for now.

***

Isabelle

No sign of Asil. Not that this is top of your mind, but out of the whole receiving crew and entourage, she was missing. She hasn’t had time to do custom work on your new mecha either. But when you get to your own room, there’s a little circular projection drone, not much bigger than your fist, set on the bed for you to inspect.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. You have to situation Quar first, who is not talking at all. She’s definitely more reserved than Solarel as well. She barely tests her bonds, takes in her new room without moving an inch, just stony silence. Her hands are bound, so she can’t sign to you either, not that you’d know much of them without an AI assistant, so that’s something to work on as well. Still, she doesn’t seem unhappy if that makes sense. She’s in enemy hands, she’s surrendered, her room is nice and spacious, and she settles in to take a seat on the bed without saying much of anything. You can untie her if you want, the door can be programmed to lock from the outside. You could also just give her run of the space, have the external staff told to keep her within a perimeter though that really is starting to risk a breakout if she decides to stop being so docile.

You’re going to need to think about how to get her to teach you though, especially as she does not appear to consider this relationship to be one where you’ve become an insider. At least not yet. Maybe that’s something to ask her once you have sign-language help.

You also don’t have much time. Your post-match afternoon is free for rest or relaxation, but once you’re up the next morning, it’s back to the grueling schedule. Indeed, given how close this match was, in your mother’s view at any rate, the training schedule is about to get even heavier, not to mention that she insisted that this new thing with Quar not allow for any deviation from that training. Hope you weren’t too attached to sleep.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Dolly

It felt like it took an eternity, and you were terrified the entire time of further damaging Jade’s idol, but with Silver Ripples assisting, you made it back to the hangar, parting ways with Erys Bander and her crew for who knows how long.

The next couple hours were tense. You’re not a mechanic and you knew to stay out of the way, but there wasn’t anywhere else to go, and what if Jade woke up while they were working on her idol, wouldn’t she want her Dolly right there? Best then to wait in the Hangar, stay nearby, never going further than the small engineer break room in Jade’s berth to get a drink of water before coming back to see how the work is going.

Finally though, Nine Forests comes out and puts a hand on your shoulder, as the other engineers make their way down from the mounts and scaffolding of the berth. “So, best we can tell what happened is that the intense power output through damaged systems overloaded the ship’s electrical circuits. Since Jade inhabits the mecha AI and every possible way for the AI to interface with you broke, the power shut down and you were stuck at the end. The Crystal Fire Core isn’t damaged, and neither are the storage cores for the mecha AI system though. So, take a breath. She’s still in there and we’ll fix all the damage and replace the circuits. She just can’t talk to us right now because every system that’s in that mecha to do it is burnt out. I think it will take at least a full day before we can get anything in here and connected, and she might need to come out carefully since the experience of full AI storage might be odd for her. Jade’s been pretty active since she first appeared, best I can remember.”

Sixes finishes clambering down from near the cockpit area and comes up to join you. “What she’s saying is take the day off. Go relax somewhere, nothing is going to happen here and you’re making everyone nervous. Here, actually. I got a discount promo thing for the big mall on Akar Prime. Go shopping, get yourself something nice, get some food over there. No reason to just stand around here making everyone nervous, you get me?”

She tosses you a little mesh clip. When you catch it, you see in one corner of your vision a promo for Staszk and Jessica’s emporium, special sale on new Hybrasilian fabrics. They must have sent this around to the engineering crews hoping to drum up some business.

It might be nice to take a day off and just enjoy yourself. Mother Hybrasil has provided her priestess more than enough to splurge, especially at a discount.

Jade

The court is lit with torch light that shines like starlight. The ball is brought forth by spirits of shadow and bone, and placed in your hands. You will find it firm and strong. What then is to be the game?

***

Mirror

Though there’s barely anything left of Heim’s mecha, he manages a last message from the wreckage. He’s not laughing but…
“Mira Fisher, Whispered Promise” he says, using your proper name for the first time. “Whatever you may think, this battle was everything I hoped for and more. I could not ask to exit the tournament any better way, nor for the Blast Wall’s final end to have been any grander. You will always be welcome in my hold.”

Then he signs off. He doesn’t ask you for a tow, though he could. Instead he appears content to wait in the arena until someone comes and gets him.

When you get back, you’re met by a ball of Matty who is positively quivering with excitement and wants to jump all over the Nine-Tails for examination. She has also been tasked with handing you your post-match drink and she looks extremely proud of herself for getting to do something so important, though it may also have been a cunning strategy on Slate’s part to make sure she didn’t literally bowl you over getting to the controls. Trosta is not present, but it looks like Matty has a datapad that’s probably full of notes in her other hand. Slate and the rest of the team are there as well, Slate looking slightly rueful at the energy that Matty’s putting out, and also calculatingly at your stance and expression as you exit the Nine Tails.

How are you coming out of this?

***

Isabelle

Almira considers all that, hand on her chin. This is a distinct improvement over her previous stance, which suggested she might strike you for idiocy given the proper privacy. She smooths her ruffled skirt and sighs. “A blatant post-fact justification if I’ve ever heard one. But a competent one. I give you credit for thinking on your feet, but next time plan it better. If you know you’ve been an impetuous fool, work on your presentation so that the first someone sees of you they already think you’re in command. The key, my daughter, is to never let them see you sweat.” and that’s about the most praise you’ll ever get from your mother. She turns to the mecha you’ve carried into your hangar.

“Get on with it then. And do educate your prisoner properly. I won’t accept you shirking your training simply because you’re the only one she’ll speak to, so either you’re going to educate her about the structure of our house or you’re going to make arrangements for her care that do not require speaking.

When the damaged Lightning Chaser is finally put down, Quar exits onto the walkway and goes down on one knee, head lowered in a knightly stance. She does not yet speak, whatever you may have just told your mother, and instead makes a sigh of subservience, which she knows indicates that this is still part of her original surrender and she expects to be bound as appropriate for a prisoner in your care and taken back to your house. You get the…gist of that roughly from the nanobots. It works less well outside the mecha, but you did bond with Quar so there’s something active there. At least enough to get that you’re supposed to bind her now.

***

Solarel

There are demands of you from many corners, but the Boatmen of Styx, having failed at both violence and typical communications channels have decided that their next tactic is going to be polite persistence.

Thus, once you’ve dropped off Angela and returned to your lonely Hangar berth, you’ll find yourself visited by a polite young woman wearing the boatmen colors and with a cybernetic right arm and right eye implant. She is at the entrance to your berth, pressing the panel to buzz you for permission to enter.

“Hello, my name is Ivy and I’m here to discuss a debt. This is a friendly call, I’m unarmed, but my instructions are to remain until I get some kind of answer. Could you let me in? I’m sure we can address this reasonably, especially after your last match result.” She smiles, her cybernetic eye glowing a cool blue that says she’s not afraid to look different from normal but also doesn’t want murder-bot red like in the dramas.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

You’ve won the match. Tactical superiority carried the day. The Barn Owl cannot move. It has no ammo, it cannot strike you. Angela concedes and screens come on declaring you the victor. The Boatman of Styx have a congratulatory message waiting for you if or when you care to give them the time of day.

Can you say that Angela has won your understanding? You did not draw your blade upon her, never gave her the satisfaction. To the very end she was denied and her loss was impetuousness in the face of denial. It’s a mistake she won’t repeat twice.

Angela cannot stand, the legs of the Barn Owl are ruined beyond repair, they’ll need to be completely replaced before her next match. She signals to you for a tow to the hangar now that the match is over.

She’s broadcasting out loud as well, a message for you and everyone watching. She’s laughing. “Two losses because I was a fool chasing my last phantom. A hidden weapon like this would have easily caught an over-arrogant goddess. But for you, Solarel, I needed precautions, defenses, and unending vigilance. Ay ay me, I am stupid. I challenged your honor and you dropped a mine at my feet. Ha! Haha! This is no less than I deserve. I know not if we shall meet again, I think you less engaged in the antics of our strange lifestyle between fights than the cats. But I shall watch your fights with interest. And the fights of your former comrades in arms.”

You hear the brief sound of her perusing the match channels from her cockpit, a short electronic beep as she passes through each set. “Hmm, appears that one of your knights surrendered honorably to a Terenian. Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella. Do you know her?”

She knows you won’t answer, but she asks anyway. Terenians are a strange sort.

***

Dolly

Erys Bander loves to pose and show off. There’s a moment, you’re on the ground and not moving, but the match hasn’t ended yet. She has to do her finisher. She has come in and put a foot on you and then make her mark upon Jade. You know it well, Jade’s got the same instinct and the Red Band are famous for this. It’s their calling card to mark their conquests and Erys is, if anything, the stereotype of these pirates. Strong, brash, proud and full of life.

You kick, there’s a muffled clang of metal upon metal. She staggers and you’re upon her. In your hands are the binding chords, Jade’s last weapon. You wrap them about the neck of the [Grip of Dishai] and you pull as tight as you can, the whole of your weight hanging upon her.

Here, in this moment, you can think for just a second that you could win the match. If you could but hold, if Jade had all her strength, this would be a victory, a surprise reversal of a reversal to clinch the victory and remain undefeated.

But Jade is not there. She departs like a firefly. The lights within the cockpit flicker and dim. The eyes of the idol dim too and the screens all go out. You disconnect from your neural interface. Within the cockpit, you rest in darkness. No torches burn, no visions show you dancing and whirling in the starlight and no hands lift you up or press upon you to reward you for your victory.

But neither does the fist of Dishai crush you to oblivion. Even without any direction for the motivating force of your drive, you’ve locked arms tight holding the chords in place and Erys cannot move without tearing her own head from her neck. She growls over the comms. She rages in perfect stillness, and at last she disconnects her own neural interface.

The match is a draw, both pilots were rendered incapable of combat at the same time.

You can both withdraw from the field after, though it’s a tangled affair. Erys can’t move until you can, and without any sort of assistive piloting interface, you need to open your cockpit for vision and manually control the idol in a very slow and awkward process that requires you to put each movement into a physical backup interface that can operate without any sort of AI assistance (you can’t imagine anyone choosing to pilot their mecha this way normally, they would have to be some kind of savant).

You’ll need to slowly release the arms and undo the chords before you can let yourself down and let her power back up. Erys will, of course, offer taunts the whole time. After all, you just can’t let her go, can you?

Jade

Do goddesses dream?

***

Mirror

He’s laughing. Still laughing. Not just laughing, he’s shouting, whooping. You can hear the absolute joy he’s feeling.

“Ahahaha, I’ve never felt anything like that. Incredible, incredible!!!”

From out of the smoke, he comes. Shield discarded, armor melted off, shield generators overloaded and discarded. He’s faster than he’s ever been. Of course he is, it’s basic science. The same power source moving half the weight will accelerate twice as quickly. It’s the most fundamental fact of interstellar travel, the basis for every technological leap that made possible a galactic civilization of catgirls.

But he’s not faster than your reaction time, Mirror. You might have thought the fight over, and that attack was surely spectacular. Your new energy algorithm agrees. The display is making a low but pleasant humming sound like something that might come from a stringed instrument, the bar’s sitting at full, and tail nine is lit up and ready to go.

You have to choose. You’ll win the fight no matter what, but with the speed he’s given himself, your other tails won’t be able to stop him from impacting you. Only an overwhelming attack will arrest his momentum in time. Are you prepared to unleash the power you’ve been saving?

***

Isabelle

“Dios mio!” the shout greets you as you disembark from the hangar. You’ve brought the Lightning Chaser as well as your own novasurge all the way to your berth. What else were you going to do with it at that point? You could hardly unceremoniously dump it halfway there once you’d started carrying it like you were in Star Raiders 2, the news would have been all over it if Isabelle Lozano were that much of an ass. And she was your prisoner, so if you’d tried to drop her at her berth instead, that would have been weird and confused Quar completely.

So now you’re back, you’re still in your mecha carrying another pretty beat up mecha and right there on the walkway at cockpit level is your mother with her staff and the entire cadre of siblings following along as she exclaims.

“Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella, what in the stars were you thinking? Have you seen these fiends fight? The one in the other match dropped a mine on her unsuspecting opponent and you accept a wordless surrender?! You drag her here?! The news will think you mean to ravish her, and it’s a miracle she didn’t shoot you in the back the second you lowered her guard! What a hopeless daughter. You execute on everything perfectly and then only blind luck brings you to the finish.”

How do you even start with her? How do you tell her that when you touched the mecha and shared those nanites that you felt a connection, that you knew you could trust her? How do you tell her that you’ve inherited a strange power from a long-dead precursor civilization? How do you tell her that she’s right and this all relied on your own sense of honor and luck before you got any of those mystical insights?

[Mark Heir to a Mystic Power for your next dealings with or about Quar.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Jade

A goddess can experience the rush of a fight, can’t she? The thrill of pleasure when you cut the chords of the wrap and reveal the full chestplate of the [Grip of Dishai]. You know what it’s supposed to feel like, too. The Hybrasilian myths are full of thrill. The pounding heart, the rush of the wind past your ears, the feeling of strength as your feet touch the earth and press and the whole world moves as you command it. You can feel those things. Vines snap like so much detritus where your feet tread. Each thrust of your lance parts the air and crackles with its snap forward. And before you, an effigy of your Dolly in your size. It is magical.

For a few moments, you dominate the fight. The [Grip of Dishai] is not a fast mecha, and you have an advantage in range. This is a classic winning combination. You have the jump on her too, all that boasting, the way she was showing you her chest, it certainly made it easy to cut the shift fully loose from it.

Then it was a matter of precision, of avoiding the decisive strike through the heart (because that’s just…no, you can’t). With the shift flying loose, you moved to the bangles and charms, dancing against the outer limbs as Erys fell back, crashing backwards straight through a low building that her fist reduced to rubble. As she turned to gain distance, that gave you a chance to cut the bracelets loose from the arm that passed closest to you. Then it was a short chase, and a light dance as you quickstep around the fist. So tantalizing, goddess, but always out of reach of her grip, your lance acting as your only touch, its point your caress and your bite.

Then it’s the necklace and that’s a tricky one. You have to shift on her, come around from the side to avoid piercing the heart. You have to take your Dolly unawares, come in close, touch her, slip your lance through what remains of her skirt and up and pull the necklace from her. The protection of her goddess Dishai, skewered upon your lance as you lean in close enough to kiss her.

It’s only then, with your triumph in hand, with Erys Bander seething with shame and anger, her mecha stripped almost naked, that you realize your mistake. You had to come in close for that final charm, and now you’re in reach of that great and powerful fist. Free of charms, free of protections, but the fist itself untouched, unharmed by your lance. Do you feel that grip on your arm? That strength? What does that feel like, as she crushes even your metal skin in the power of that grip?

Dolly

You’ve just watched Jade summarily strip you naked, remove each piece of your jewelry and finally come in close for a caress. And now, within Jade, linked to her as your mecha, you can feel Erys Bander’s touch too, a strong grip on your arm as well, pressing down just enough to make it uncomfortable through your neural mesh.

And over the comms, comes her voice, full of her pride and her thrill, “Got you~”
[Erys loses all her charms and her mecha is undressed, she takes Angry, you have a string on her. In exchange, she seizes a superior position, crushing the part of Jade’s arm just above where she was holding the lance.]

***

Solarel

She has almost forgotten.

There is a moment where you can see into her heart. The clouds clear, and there stands the Barn Owl, visibly shuddering with its pilot, ion cannon at the ready, quite nearly pointed at you, already adjusting but too far away. Her arm waivers. She is cold. She would like nothing more than to sag and let you catch her, though it means her loss. To let you hold her and take her, exhausted, and then to rail against your triumph and swear that she will have retribution. She did that for Dolly and Jade when they had her at their mercy and she loved every second of it.

But, you don’t quite have her at your mercy. Close, so tantalizingly close. But it’s still her choice, her decision. Her arms hurts with the pain of holding that canon at the ready for so long. It burns and begs for release but she has to choose to lower it. Angela Victoria Miera Antonius is many things, but above all she has her pride. Too proud to choose surrender. It would burn her forever to give up when she can still fight.

She comes through the comms, teeth chattering. “Your new mecha is quite something. Is this how the knights of Z-zaldar fight? In deception and stealth? Wearing me out like you are hunting a buffalo? Hm? Hm?! W-well, I will not roll over and die for you. The clouds clear now, and I have your measure, villain. I w-will yet have the d-day!”

Then, ion canon aimed, she rushes you to try for the decisive shot.

[Angela will give you a string on her, rather than give herself up.]

***

Mirror

“It’s already a battle for the ages, little knight.” He nods to himself. Even as you press him, even as the tails scream and the blast takes his spear, no energy shields to lessen the blow. He lets it go like it’s nothing, you incinerate it with no difficulty.

Because now, now is the time for the missiles. With systems overheating, with all the energy poured into the attack, he is an old warrior and he knows how to recognize when his opponent needs a moment of recovery.

He fires them in quick succession, four missiles, each one with its own little roar, and then he unstraps the mechanism from his mecha and lets it fall. It has lost its worth entirely for him.

“Hmm, you have a lot to say.” He speaks as the missiles race at you. It’s not exactly Solarel’s information poisoning. For him it’s the opposite, his mind is most clear in battle, his thoughts focused in the intensity of the action. It’s still a lot of inputs being offered to you all at once though. “And to it I say this. Revel in the moment. Live! Love! Value is for later, for when you have time to sit and count. For me, I count lives. Saved, little knight, not taken. Each blast that comes to me is one that never touches my raiders. Each ship of goods is lives that my hold can take. And now I am old and my people thrive, and I can stand here and feel the heat as you burn my spear from my hands. It’s grand!”

He is not still, he has taken to the air as he speaks, following your movement, tailing his own missiles, looking to stay close for the opportunity to strike, a fifth missile far greater in its danger than the first four.

“If tomorrow I am dead, then so be it! If I live, then I will eat and drink and then I will prepare. And if I am lucky, my people will write me songs when I am gone and that will be good!” And then he laughs again, after he had not through his whole speech. He cannot help but laugh because all of this to him is a joy, no matter what happens from here.

***

Isabelle

The slump of the shoulders when the plan fails is all you need to see. A knight of Zaldar defeated, humbled, her chance to go out with honor discarded.

Do you see now what Solarel did to you? Did for you? Though you were left to wander in despair, by giving you everything she had, she burned herself into your soul, cut the shape of your life, and drove you, burning with cold, to a new end.

But for Quar, you offer her defeat, surrender, humiliation. And… perhaps more. Perhaps, there is another way than Solarel’s way, that’s what you’re saying to her here. A way different than giving everything, a way towards understanding. It’s a bold offer for a knight of Zaldar. If you hadn’t utterly defeated her, she wouldn’t have taken it.

There is something in defeat, in knowing that you cannot win that can change a person. When you hold power, you can either be driven by want or by fear. If it is want, then you seek, you demand, you wield your power recklessly and selflessly until the whole world changes for you. But if it’s fear, then it is fear of loss, of change and you are begging the universe for an infinite and everlasting now. Quar wielded her power from fear, and with it gone, she has let go a great burden.

She does not speak, but her hands let her gun go and she kneels and signs in the language of Zaldar. You don’t know it yourself, but your mecha AI puts on a screen for you that it says something to the effect of “take me, you have earned me.”

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Now there are two fights in full focus. The maid against her N'yari captors, and Giri against Hanaha. Giri, fully engaged, safe from any demonic magic for the moment, goes into a spin. Hanaha's tail flies out behind her and she barely holds on as Giri picks up momentum, grabbing the N'yari as she spins and pulling her from her grip on Giri's head sending her flying!

She doesn't let up from the press though. She leaps on Hanaha as she lands, slamming an elbow into her and trying to pin the N'yari with Giri's raw strength. She presses her arms against Hanaha's to hold her down and sits her butt right on top of Hanaha's legs. She does her best to ignore the claws and the attempts to squirm out from the hold once Hanaha recovers her breath.

[Giri is attempting to defy disaster with daring to decisively pin Hanaha. She is risking having her position reversed on her. 5+3+0=8. She can do it with a cost or a hard choice.]

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

The blizzard howls. The autocannons don’t cut off entirely, Angela prefers to fire blindly, trying to track which way you might have gone. She’s never willing to give ground, not now, not after her humiliation. But she guesses wrong, her shots fly wide, the idea that you’d simply not move at all doesn’t occur to her.

Your shot makes no noise. It hits her like a vampire’s kiss, quietly draining the life from her mecha. You hear the shudder run through the whole frame before you withdraw into the storm. The guns fall silent then, the only noise is the snow and the wind that rushes to fill the vortex of emptiness you created.

The comms crackle then, buzzing with static in the sudden storm. “You fiend. You you you! Nothing but trickery. Nothing but deception. You cannot fight an opponent face to face!” Her teeth chatter with the cold over the comms for a second. “D-do you care nothing for the shame you bring your species?”

You can hear the fear in her voice though, it’s not just the chattering of the cold. But she rallies her best efforts. “Fine then. Fine. Do not think me done. I will show you that such tricks are worthless. Come at me again if you dare!”

You hear, faintly within the storm, a specific whine, the sound of an ion cannon powering on. Such weapons only have a very short range, but the blast could take out a mecha as small as the Kathresis in a single shot. She must have made quite the customization to the Barn Owl for this, it requires a lot of power. Pirates sometimes pack single shot ion cannons with their own slow-recharging power source for surprise attacks, but you shouldn’t count on this being one and done. This is an offer, and it is a demand. If you want to be the unstoppable villain, you need to be perfect. To dance with her without a single mistake. Can you do it?

[Angela will take the Frightened condition, responding by revealing and charging her ion cannon. She will also take a string on Solarel with her part of the fight. She’ll spend it immediately to subtract 1 on your next roll if it’s relevant to do so.]

***

Isabelle

Of course she’ll stay. Anger loves being directed. The intensity of the fight, that turns her anger into sustaining energy. Each missile, each bullet, each energy blast is her fury pulsing outwards and your intensity pressing right back. She doesn’t have to speak a word to make the thrill pulsing through her obvious to everyone watching.
And then, you pull away when she doesn’t expect it. It’s like learning the tango and forgetting a step in the routine. She gasps, she stiffens and her stance stiffens visibly in the mecha. She knows the blow is coming, but not from where. And so it’s a blow into her heart, the blade passing through the center of the mecha, passing dangerously close to the pilot herself. A mess of wires sparks and sizzles where they’re cut and loose electricity and heat leak out enough that you can sense them through novasurge.

You can see the hopelessness in her movements, the sudden realization that she’s not going to win this fight. What you don’t see immediately is the way she slips the cartridge out of her main gun and clasps it in one hand, ready to burst it with her metallic fingers.

How could you notice? Not when you’re so caught up in the moment, in the rush of the push and pull, of having your blade sunk deep into her.

[Quar will take a string on you and spend it immediately. If you let yourself get lost in the moment and fall into her trap, there’s an XP in it for you. The trap will end the fight in your favor, but with a big hit on you in the process.]

***

Mirror

When you finish with the shield, your console lights up. Bar’s full, and it flashes that you can access tail 2 or tail 5, your pick. For his part, Heim’s defenses flicker and fail, your last laser blast creates crackling sparks in the air and the brush of the laser ever so gently heats the metal skin of the Blast Wall.

Heim laughs again. He is reveling in this fight. “Use me as you wish, warrior! Use me however you like! But tell them after that true Zaldarians fight with honor! With pride! Being a raider, an outcast, an exile doesn’t mean that you have no honor!”

He maintains his balance through your blows, rounds on you with his shield first, slamming it full body into the Nine Tails as you finish with the shield, making your ears ring with the clang of metal. The spear follows with surprising fluidity, shearing a line off the side of the nine-tails leg with the low thrust under the raised shield.

[Take Insecure in response to your fight, Heim will take Guilty]

“And Hybrasilian, don’t think that just because someone follows the code of Zaldar that they’re worth something. I’m old, child, I’ve seen our knights rise and fall under three empresses. The meaning of the code changes like the winds. Your girl’s worth something because she’s got steel in her heart and she stood up and took the mantle of traitor for what she believed was right. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t still a traitor. Would you do the same in her place?”

He pulls the spear back, rebalances his shield. He knows you’re positioned for another attack and that if you get around him now, you could make it much more decisive, so he didn’t try to follow up his successful strike with another that might leave him open. Instead it’s restoration of the defense he has and careful probing for another opening. His balance is by far his most impressive trait, he’s hard to throw off his movements and his mecha is so heavy that he can carry through even during a very powerful attack. He must have nerves of steel (or entirely deadened nerves) not to flinch in such a moment given the strong neural link most Zaldarians have. Maybe the thick armor acts sort of like a thick skin for him as well, dulling the blows?

***

Jade

Were you ready for this? You flush out the [Grip of Dishai], you take Erys Bander by surprise. You pull that powerful fist out of position, you slam upon her head and tumble into the rubble, and you can imagine all the watching Red Banders laughing in delight at the show. Stories will be told of this fight, stories of the goddess who embarrasses her opponents.

But were you ready for this? Her cloak drops and you finally see what you’re up against. Far from the previous matches with its camo patterns, you find yourself facing a great mecha version of Dolly! It’s wearing her ceremonial skirt, fashioned in giant size. Her priestess wrap circles the shoulders, gods know how they got that much cloth worked together that quickly and integrated with the mecha’s cloaking system. And festooned upon the neck and about the arms are charms and wards invoking the protection of the goddesses of Hybrasil. There on her wrist is the symbol of Irtana the binder of goddesses. And there about the neck is the blessing of Dishai herself, a great stone ward upon a chain that will not let you seize her soul.

And Erys Bander, she’s loving this. She’s loving a rival, a challenge. She stands from the crash, her arm free, her chest out. She’s baring herself, her cloak, her charms. You want this? It asks. It’s all yours, just come and take it! She flexes, she poses for you. This giant effigy of your Dolly, chest out and strong like Dolly herself never quite seems to manage without a great deal of “coaxing” on your part.

[Take your string as well]

Dolly

What’s Jade showing you of all this? Are you getting the unadulterated view, or is there a fantasy she’s offering you right now?

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Isabelle

You feel, rather than see a break in the shots. It’s not as clean as you’d like. A few days with Novasurge isn’t enough to really get the subtleties that a neural mesh link can offer. But even so, the obvious change in the movement of light debris and dust colliding with your mecha when the shots simply stop altogether is simply impossible to miss.

There’s nothing over the comms, no words at all. This is the danger of breaking visual contact, and the reason these crevices in the station are such high risk. The Lighting Chaser is above you almost before you realize it, and you just barely manage to get out of the way from a shot from the primary rifle. She fired at closer range than it ought to be for that gun, the directed blast coming out of the crevice sends you flying and it sends her flying the other way.

Reckless. That’s the only word for it. You can feel the simmering anger. Without a word being said, you know that she feels it intensely, that anger courses through her. But she’s barely met Solarel. This is an anger of reputation. It’s an anger of being told that someone is the villain, but having your flight instructors still tell you that you don’t measure up to them anyway. The anger of not being good enough and the anger that someone undeserving is better than you. You might have felt it yourself once or twice, Isabelle.

At this moment though, the real question is whether you can pick up the pace. Quar is mad. She’s coming at you hard, like stupid hard. You barely dodge a homing missile that circles back towards you, forcing you onto the defensive, and she’s just starting up the barrage in earnest. The strategy that your mother recommended remains sound if you stick to it, but you can’t do this and be emotionally checked out. It’s too intense, too fast, it’s like trying to be checked out of sprinting. It demands one hundred percent of your attention. It’s intense, it’s exhausting, and you’re going to be breathing hard by the end of it. But if you can keep up and move elusively through that pace, you’ll have her.

[If you keep up here, take the XP or clear a condition for acting on your mom’s advice]

***

Jolly

There’s the ripple of the cloaking field. It was just to the side of your explosion, she dove out of the way. A building side caves in where she bodied it, and you can guess pretty well where she’ll come out.

She’s trying very hard to hide. Might just be that she doesn’t want to drop this advantage without a fight. Maybe she’s got a big reveal that she’s really holding onto. Maybe you caught her off guard zeroing in this well and she’s simply scrambling to get a moment’s respite.

Either way, you’ve got the edge on her, but you’ll need to commit to this. Block her exit with another missile, then shift your position sideways and bomb precision strike her through the building opening with as much intensity as you’ve got. You’ll bring down her cloak without losing your aerial advantage. But, you’ll exhaust your full supply of missiles in the process, leaving you without your long-range option. If you don’t take the shots now, she’ll slip out the sides and get cover in the alleys between the fabricated buildings, obscuring your sight in your current position and forcing you to fly closer overhead where she probably went to scout her properly, making your position more vulnerable.

She’s keeping coms silence too. You can take this as a form of triumph. Erys is taking you seriously. No gloating, no taunting. At least not yet, not in this first part of the exchange while she’s cloaked and trying to get one over on you. If she gets you in a headlock, you can expect a lot of taunts to happen, but she’s not risking her position with even a short burst of comms traffic. This does leave you free to imagine the chatter though, which probably would have been something like “what the fuck?!” as she dove out of the way of the first missile so close to her position. Perhaps you’d like to taunt her? Send it out on a wide band for all the cameras too. Tell her what a coward she is as you try to force her out. She’ll probably like it if you banter like you’re part of the Red Band yourself.

***

Mirror

Heim laughs, long and hearty, though his shield never waivers. You get to see the next layers of defense as you flip up and over. Though he positions the shield to bear the brunt of the blow, you’re more than agile enough in your flip to bypass it before he can fully turn, but what you encounter are energy shields that crackle against your beams for a brief instant and then you’re past. Layers and layers of defense to crack on this one.

He laughs again as you finish the move. “I do know, Hybrasilian. The one-day defender, but it’s the year after that matters! You lived with one of our finest knights for nearly a year! Ha! You’re no more an outsider than the capital knights themselves and I give them the time of day, though honestly I think Zaldar would have told me to ignore the whole lot if she were here. Solarel was better than any of the current crop. She was raw, that one. They didn’t just hand her power, she took it, rode it like it was on fire, burned it to the edges of what it could take. Nobody can fly the Aeteline now, have you heard? She broke it for them, hahahahaha!”

He’s not stationary. His mecha isn’t fast, but he’s making his way to you where you landed and he knows how to fight at his speed. It’s difficult to read the exact timing of his thrusts, when he’s going to actually put the force behind the spear, and he moves inexorably, never overcommitting his weight and always holding his balance. You could jump away and get clear anytime you please, but then you’ll be back to dealing with that ironclad defense.

“Maybe I’m wrong though. I thought you were a true warrior and spoke to you as such. I saw your fight with the sniper. You took her shot head on, even though it blew clean through you! That’s what I want, girl! I want that strength! Give me a good fight! A fight for the ages!”

You can hear in his voice that he means it. There’s a rasp to it, a gruffness that wasn’t present for Solarel. He’s worried he won’t get a good fight. He’s not stupid, he’s reserving his missiles because he knows that if he exhausts them completely you probably have the technique to pick at his defenses without him ever engaging you. It will be long, slow and boring, a thousand arrows plinking at an armored knight before he collapses from exhaustion, but he knows full well you could do it. It doesn’t scare him that he might lose, but it scares him to lose this chance, to walk away from this without getting anything from it. He wants you to fight him head on, to be a fury and a madwoman and to meet his strength with strength. He respects you enough to think you’ll do it.

Your new display is filled up about 75% by the by. That backflip trident maneuver seems to have gone over well with it, and it’s almost ready to light up another tail for you.

***

Solarel

A day ago, in a small and unremarkable office on Akar Prime
“Did you reach the mecha?” A seated dark-colored Terenian woman in a white suit asks the Zaldarian who just came into the room.

“Yes,” the Zaldarian signed, smoothly, evenly, neutrally.

“Good” says the Terenian woman, pushing her hair back. “That will be all for now then. We’ll let you know when you’re needed for the next match.”

The Zaldarian departed, breathing a sigh of relief at how the question had been asked. She had reached the mecha, started to make modifications even. It would have some difficulty. But Trosta had been visiting the Hangar, and several cats had seemed unusually alert for her. Even being in a different section, she had bailed out part way through. If they’d seen her, if they’d heard her, she’d be ruined. The Empress would disavow her involvement, claim she was a rogue operative. She’d agree of course, to save face for the Zaldarian empire. And that would be that. An exile. She didn’t understand why the Empress was willing to help like this in the first place, and the layers between them meant that Solarel didn’t even know.

But she was out and none the wiser, at least until the match. She’d make herself scarce that day.

In the arena
There’s a moment where the Barn Owl freezes up. You can tell from the juddering motion and the sudden halting of the arms tracking you. You line up the shot, but as you do there’s a wrenching sound and the Barn Owl pulls away. The shot goes wide, leaving a frozen patch against the edge of the stony mountain just to the side of Angela’s mecha.

“You dare!” she shouts, voice full of righteous outrage. “You dare?! I saw your last match and the great strange mecha you fought against shut down. I had my engineers go over every inch of the Barn Owl today before the match and still you dare! Aye, you will rue the day you crossed me!”

She’s not slow. The Barn Owl’s crystal fire drive has flared to life and Angela is racing across the arena. She’s not firing stationary like she did in her fight against Dolly either. She’s rushing at you as she shoots, adding to the speed of the bullets, creating a tighter field of fire. The Kathresis is many things, but it is not sturdy. Bullets are ricocheting from your shields and you need to move ahead of her because you can’t actually withstand that barrage for any sustained length of time.

It hurts, seeing a girl fight her heart out like this and knowing that you almost denied her the chance. It hurts proving to her that she was right to see you as the villain, even knowing that’s the role you need to play.

[Mark Guilty]

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Hard to point fingers on the matter of forbidden sorcery. Oh, this was probably a terrible idea. Part of Giriel immediately wanted to shout No, stop or abandon her fight and try to tackle the scribe before she did something utterly stupid. But only part of Giri wanted this. Her second thought was to remember back to the firewands, the Rakshasa's curse, the pain she had seen for just a brief moment in this girl. She didn't want to pile on top of that, and she definitely didn't want to throw herself at something that was cursed to just explode and explode and explode.

In that moment of thinking, Hanaha gets her in a headlock, and she can't see what's happening. A N'yari wrestling match really does demand full attention. Though Giri's head may be locked, she plants her feet and heaves with a grunt that huffs straight through Hanaha's fluffy arm. Her face red, she lifts the N'yari completely off her feet. Though Hanaha may still holding Giri's head, she's now dangling half off the witch's broad back and her grip has to switch from a tight headlock to scrabbling for purchase lest she fall unceremoniously on her ass.

Giri gains her stance and her vision back as Hanaha scrabbles just in time to turn and see what the scribe has in store for them.

Huntresses of Hybrasil

Solarel

It’s very cold.

The air here is thin, and above you is thick cloud cover. Before you, the terrain is nearly flat, covered with low green grasses that to the footsteps of the Kathresis might as well be carpet. A black, mournful wind swirls within the mountain bowl. It kicks up loose leaves and dust and carries the hint of snow upon it.

You enter the arena from one end of the mountain ring. Across from you at the other end of your arena stands the Barn Owl. It’s unassuming. Angela did not change the color since her previous match, it’s the same utilitarian brown as before, a simple human form mecha. It seems Angela changed very little on the surface in fact. It’s hard to tell at this distance, but the mark that Jade made upon the mecha seems to have been entirely preserved, with only a few repairs made to fix the dents and tears from the combat. Blocky shoulders steady the autocannons, the wrist blades are already drawn, and if she’s got a new trick, she’s not showing it.

She might as well have commissioned a neon sign with defiance emblazoned on it over the arena. She defies you to outdo Dolly and Jade, she defies you to force her to reveal something she has not already shown, she defies you to approach her.

The comms light up with her voice, thick and almost shouting a challenge. “Zaldarian. Do not think that I will go down as I did in my previous match. Do not dare think your new mecha will mean I am unprepared for you. I have heard your stories and I am unimpressed. Show me something worth remembering this fight!”

***

Mirror

The space feels cramped, even compared to the statistics. It’s multi-story, but you’re so used to speed, knowing that any straight flight would slam you into a wall or ceiling in scant seconds must feel confining. The floor is a sandy stone, the stands are white marble. They gleam in the bright lights, and from a bit of sunlight from the small skylight in the center of the ceiling. Too small for a mecha to fit through, unless one blew it open and collapsed the roof.

Somewhere a planet away, Matty is sitting with Trosta to observe the match, though she glances slyly over to Slate when she has the chance and perhaps Slate knows that Matty would prefer a lap seat if she had the choice.

Tails one, three, and seven are operational. All the others have no energy flow going to them. Energy efficiency in the active tails is high. 99.97%, which is the best you’ve ever seen it be. Trosta, whatever else she might be, appears to be a magician when it comes to wiring and capacitors. Your new internal display shows your current stance, with the active tails highlighted in green. There’s an unfilled rectangular meter in an outline at the top.

Heim enters the arena opposite you. There’s no hiding here. The Blast Wall lives up to its name, hefting a massive rectangular shield painted black along its outer surface. It’s taller than the head of Heim’s mecha and protects all but the very edge of his right arm, from which he hefts a short and maneuverable ionic spear. Everything about his mecha feels thick and sturdy. The legs are planted and you can see from the right side past the shield that they have extra armor plating, perhaps also housing a shield generator. The shoulders are thick, and there is a harness just visible on the chest behind the shield holding the missile launching system in place. His decorations upon the metallic Zaldarian shell are teal highlights along the borders of his armor and his helm, contrasting with the painted dark metal of most of it. Teal is part of the banner of his hold, called Heimdall, the best translation of a god who is always vigilant. The base of the helm forms a slight metallic beard, a sign of age and some protection for the neck of the mecha.

Despite his sturdy defense, you can see that he stands at ease as he enters, the spear held point up, not immediately in an attack stance. He could set his weight at any moment, he simply hasn’t done it to start things off.

“I hear you fought Solarel twice” comes his voice as the cameras circle the two of you, staying carefully distant in the stands. “Even won the second one. You won’t find me like her. Whatever she is now, she was an imperial knight, a servant of the Empress. Me, I’m a raider.”

He chuckles. Seems in no rush to do much. You might wonder if this will make for good TV or if he’s just overly confident. “If I win this fight, I’ll capture for my glory what I could never manage to hold in combat. Raiders have to manage on our own, any way we can. I’ve only ever been to Zaldaria once, an honor to hunt for my god there. But before and since it’s been about scraping together what we could from where we could. I’ve wanted to see this place, our gift to peace, to doing things differently. Every nanobot shaper in my hold contributed to it. Sent Marna the last time though and she only got second place. So I said to myself I’d better come on my own this time around!”

He laughs, long and hearty, though his eyes never stop tracking you.

***

Dolly and Jade

Erys has not deigned to join you in the sky. She’s somewhere in the city below, prowling, lurking. She has one of the better cloaking devices as well, but you can feel her out there, stalking around you, looking for an angle. Sharp eyes in a shadowed jungle.

The mark of the true huntress is said to be patience above all else. Prey needs to move, to lower its guard to eat and drink, to sleep, offering the chance to strike for a patient huntress. They had mentioned the goddess of the hunt, or at least the Leopard had, hadn’t they? Perhaps Erys is emulating the style of the goddess for protection. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to tip her hand yet.

With Ksharta, you tried to flush her out with drones. What then this time? Will you go down to her and seek her, knowing her danger? Or will you try to lure her into a foolish strike that you can turn against her? Which of you is the more patient huntress?

***

Isabelle

The lightning chaser is a mess of purple and chrome. Parts of it look nearly like exposed wires, waist and elbow joints exposed down to their moving rotators in pure metal, and around them swirls of purple paints criss-crossing the chest, the arms, the legs, as though a river of purple went mad and chose to flow all across the machine. It’s small and thin like Solarel’s mecha, but sporting a massive rifle held in both hands, with smaller shoulder AND wrist guns as well. It seems well designed to put out a hail of bullets of various types, strong and weak. When you watched Quar’s previous matches, you saw that there wasn’t a single route to victory.

She lost her first match to Ada Smith, your last opponent, a surprise decisive beating from stealth that she wasn’t prepared for. In her other matches, different weapons proved decision for victory, some fast, some slower. One opponent went down in a hail of fire, the death of a thousand cuts. The other made a foolish mistake and took a main rifle blast straight to the head from above, completely disabling the mecha and knocking the pilot unconscious.

Of course, it’s honestly a little hard to focus on any of that with everything swirling in your head. Your mother went ballistic when you were alone.

What the hell was wrong with you, Isabelle? You went off alone, you let yourself be taken by surprise, you broadcast a distress signal. Did you think Tadeo’s line so secure that nobody else would know? Did you think your absence would be unremarked, or that of your brother rushing off to save you? Everyone knows you had to limp back. Everyone knows you have no mecha of your own now. Your last loss was a disgrace to the family, and it would be a miracle if Adriana paid you any attention now.

She considered striking you in the tirade, but didn’t because explaining the mark would simply be too much effort. She had no hesitation telling you exactly that.

Almira went over every second of the previous video with you. Pointing out the movement, calculating the speed and reaction time of the pilot herself. See how Quar fades backwards in her victories, maintaining an ideal field of fire? She’s relying on her opponents desperation, chasing harder and faster so which she responds with equal speed, always maintaining her perfect firing range until she gets an opening or they wear out.

See the way people play into her expectations? A Lozano is better than that! Almira freezes the frames on several screens in each fight, where you see the Lightning Chaser shift its movement. She goes frame by frame. See it takes one fifth of a second for it to change direction consistently. You can gain ground on that small change if you can catch her unaware. Don’t follow, break her spacing. Chase, then fade, then chase again, then fade, then chase. Switch three to five times inconsistently to throw off her rhythm, then close decisively. Create a planned pattern in advance, the brain is untrustworthy and can’t be expected to manage actual randomness in a fight, so you plan your randomness. If you don’t win in the first exchange, do only a single fake in the second and then rush her, she will be bracing herself for you to equivocate after the first time and decisive action will take her unaware. If you need a third, go back to faking her out, and then repeat on a fourth she won’t expect you to break the pattern. If you need a fifth exchange, you’re a failure as a daughter.

Once, briefly, you hear soft footsteps approach while you’re working with your mother, but they turn and leave and she snaps her fingers by the side of your head for your momentary distraction.

You never saw Asil in all the other days. Not in the maintenance crews, not anywhere. Your equipment and technology deliveries are still listed properly, all crew accounted for, she hasn’t fled. But she’s avoiding you and your mother has no interest in giving you the time or space to seek to mend things. It wouldn't’ be shocking if Almira had ordered her to stay away from you, if she caught even the slightest inkling that you cared about her based on how you blew up at the crew earlier. Strong emotion runs both ways and Almira Castra Lozano was not born yesterday.

As for the fight, well, she’s already taking aim at you as she comes around the platform, orienting herself to match your most likely dodge angle away from the platform. No words from her either, just cold efficiency to start.

So how are you feeling?