[center][h3]Kibō-hosh, Draconian Contact[/h3][/center]

The moment the doors opened, the Abh forces inside the ship opened fire with coilguns, using the door as a bottleneck. The odd alien creatures managed to easily paralyze the Abh, but their fingers were already pressed down hard on the trigger. The entire hallway became a storm of gunfire and advancing aliens, the chaos seemingly making any kind of planning impossible. Though the Abh were still firing, they had no way to control which way their bullets went, causing multiple friendly fire casualties. Of course, these casualties kept on shooting, having been paralyzed in that position already.

One of the alien creatures suddenly fell, bursting and spraying the silver liquid everywhere. Its killer perfectly dodged the splatter, not letting even a single drop get on them. Another flurry of shots took down a second alien, with the killer once again avoiding the silver liquid. A katana was dragged through the body of a third, the killer latching onto the alien and swinging themselves under it in the microgravity environment, ending up on the other side of the hallway before it burst.

Whoever the killer was, they moved as if they knew what was going to happen, avoiding shots of the liquid before they were even fired. What they didn't dodge they deflected with their maneuvering jets, forcing the bursts of liquid away with the jets of monopropellant. Before long, the entire ship was clear of the aliens, all of them killed by this one Abh. With them gone, it was clear who they were: Ciaca, the captain herself. She stood silently, ordering the computer to open a channel with the alien vessel using her mind.

"Attention alien demons!" She said in an almost taunting voice, walking into the alien ship two soldiers on each of her flanks illuminating the room. "It will take more than beasts to kill Ciaca, the Ronin Empress! By sending beasts to do you own work, you have shown that you are yourself a beast! I demand to speak with this beast in a captain's skin, if you do not meet this demand, then your ship will be mine!"

[center][h3]Kibō-hosh, Ground Battle[/h3][/center]
[i]"Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve."[/i]
-Sun Tzu

The Abh were forced to focus on the enemy fighters, letting the transports slip through. On the ground, the Abh had retreated entirely into the heavily fortified city center. They were surrounded now, but the Abh seemed to be of the opinion that they were simply "In a target-rich environment". The streets funneled the enemy into the city center in an incredibly predictable manner, creating dozens of choke points that the Abh took full advantage of. While the Romans might have the advantage in numbers, those five soldiers that took the place of every one fell just as quickly as that one did, torn apart by the Abh defensive line.

It was clear that the Abh had intended for this to happen, letting themselves be trapped inside of the city with no possible escape. Either they defeat the entire Roman invading army, or they all die. Even as a fleet of airships made their way towards the city, they could feel the foreboding sense of defeat. Even so, they kept fighting, slaying enemy troops without any fear of death or loss.

The new airships came into cannon range, but held their fire. Their guns were raised, their planes were ready to launch, but none of them opened fire. A message was sent from the command vessel, apparently towards the Roman forces.

"This is General Jentorumh-Heishi Kyūsei of the Eight World's Empire. You promised not to kill... 'those who arm themselves not'. You had a word for it too, cee-veel-ee-ehn. We don't understand why you would say that, as it's just common sense that all of us would arm ourselves to fight you. Nevertheless, we took this to be your word of honor. You dishonored yourselves by attacking those who did not arm themselves, who obviously quickly did so in order to fight. I make a request of you, whoever bears the shame of this dishonor. Being the only leader left with honor, I could request anything, even your retreat. However, as you thought that we would not take up arms against you, we doubt you understand our customs. Instead, I simply ask you a question: Why do you fight us? Space is too vast and gravity too strong for you to be looking for resources, and even if you somehow came to the belief that you are superior due to your genes, we have incredibly similar genetic makeups. The basic structure is so similar that we could naturally have children. So why? Please, answer me. As aliens, you cannot be bound by our honor code, but you must have some sense of decency in you, some instinct if you will that compels you to answer. I have never had to see the lifeless eyes of one of my men before, and I would choose dishonor over seeing them without knowing for what purpose their shine has left."

[center][h3]Cathica, Arcadia[/h3][/center]

The Empress laughed, ignoring the resulting pain entirely. After a non-trivial amount of time, she finally stopped, holding her ribs in obvious pain.

"I'm the Empress of the Eight World's Empire, probably should have mentioned that earlier."

For whatever reason, she didn't even think about telling the doctor to observe the proper courtesies. In fact, she instinctively did just the opposite.

"Don't worry about how you act though, you're aliens, so I can't expect you to follow Abh customs. Even if I explained them to you, there's no reason for you to follow them, as they're mostly rooted in our religion. I would like to ask one thing of you though. If you could meet me after I'm healthy enough to stand, that would be nice. We bow to everyone we meet, and you're the first person I've actually spoken to here, so I'd like to bow to you as soon as I can. If that's not any trouble, of course. It's not like I would request that any kind of transfer be delayed so I could bow."