Robrute reacted with the cool aplomb expected of a fellow synthetic, managing to countergrab La Màquina's arms in an attempt to pull her up into a nasty iron-plated headbutt.  Not bad...but not good enough.

The maneuver didn't interfere with the formation of La Màquina's Backhands at all, as she'd started manufacturing them well before the mutual grab and they were one of her quickest and most oft-refined and practiced Forgings.  Her planned barrage of punches morphed instead into a block, her upper-left Backhand slapping a palm in front of the headbutt and arresting its force.  There wasn't enough muscle in Robrute's neck for him to get the leverage needed to knock noggins with La Màquina with the intervening arm in the way, and that left three free Backhands to get up to mischief with.

The boosters came online, Robrute threatening to take La Màquina for a rippin' rocket ride across the ground, but the big bruiserbot wasn't the only one in this match with the ability to defy gravity.  La Màquina's [i]Fallen Angel's Halo[/i] snapped open, its broad argent ring and mantling cluster of six techno-angel's blade-feathered wings appearing above Màquina's head, only just barely clearing the Robrute's own.  Her own flight disrupted and struggled against the rocket boosters, adding momentum to force their flight upwards and away from the ground as well as backwards, leaving them spiraling through the air with hard grips on each other's arms.  Well, some of each other's arms.  

La Màquina's three free limbs each curled their fingers around the grips of flash-Forged spike-bladed dirks, plucking the weapons out of the aether in a heartbeat and searching for vulnerable joints.  The Robrute's armor appeared to be phenomenally tough, but it was still conventional armor.  Not Màquina's own combination of kinetic spreader and ethereal hardening, simply big burly plates of metal and less burly weaves between them.  Those joints were the targets of Màquina's sudden flurry of stabs – the upper-right Backhand plunged its dagger down into chinks in the Robrute's neck, seeking vulnerable points with a hardened needle point and the surreal precision of Màquina's synthetic targeting systems and flawless control.

The lower two backhands went for armpits, hips, chinks in the main body armor, anything they could get to, driving with tremendous force and unerring precision into any likely weak point, probing [i]hard[/i] for weaknesses.  They were free to do so; until either Màquina or Robrute relented in their grip, the two were too close for anything else.

Unless the bruiser had more tricks than La Màquina, of course.  But in all her experiences within the Alliance and without, one thing had always remained true for the masked warrior – [i]nobody[/i] had more tricks than La Màquina.