Everywhere around them, the battlefield is motion and chaos. Ferra is holding buildings in the sky like a steel goddess, while Victor clashes directly with Victoria in a duel of brains versus exploding death beams, and Sara burns brighter than the entire city in the night. There are shock troops dashing out of hangars and extremely put upon Gears members hunkering down to meet them. There are drones flitting about everywhere, bits of brimstone still dropping here and there from on high, terrified civilians scrambling wildly about as they try to figure out where they're supposed to be running and what safety looks like in a situation they paid to never ever be in. But there's one spot in the entire spaceport where nothing's happening at all. It's still a battlefield, make no mistake about that. But all of the chaos and all of the noise is replaced by absolute stillness and a horrible sense of tension. That's how duels are. How many times can Euna mention [i]Burn, My Sword[/i] before you finally agree to watch it with her? "Don't," she says quietly, "Don't you say it too. Not you. You don't believe that." The reason for the tension is obvious. This really is one of those movie-style samurai duels where a single slash will decide the entire fight. Okita Souji crossing blades with Okada Izou: a battle fought in the margins of the decisions that both of them choose not to make. JuneBird's Impersonation Rig makes it next to impossible to tell the actual range of her zone. But if Errant commits to any sort of action, even one as simple as reaching up to click her visor back in place, the whole standoff will fall apart. JuneBird will take advantage of Errant being down an arm and it'll become a luck test of whether or not she swings in the space Errant's cybernetics try to move her into. "I'm not the one who abandoned my principles, Sasha. Look around you. Look! Is this what we fought for? Is this what we believed in? Look at this place and tell me this is still AEGIS!" Of course she doesn't look. Doesn't even spare the dart of an eye, because the fact of the matter is that's enough of an opening to bring this standoff to an explosive end. Her sword/cane/baton/cloak/hammer/Mauler crackles with a charge that's occasionally visible but mostly not. Errant's fingers slowly curl and uncurl into extremely non-committal fists while arcs of electricity leap between the fingers of her shock gloves. Both her arms are raised high, one in front of her chest and the other up behind her head, to better take advantage of the low sweeping stance JuneBird's staring her down from. "You're the one who can't see, Sasha. You've hated Sara from the moment you met her. You want her to be bad. You [i]want[/i] this to be her fault so that you don't have to make a hard decision! Well I'll tell you one thing: I trust her to be there for me a hell of a lot more than I trust you right now!" This is the moment that almost breaks Errant. Where duel-sense almost leaves her and she wants so badly to leap in and attack! All she needs is one touch, same as JuneBird! But she doesn't move an inch. She wins the test, and holds perfectly still, because her training and her practice both taught her that the person who flinches first almost always loses. Sasha's waiting for a tell here, anticipating a particular type of movement so she can swing her weapon through Errant's zone and break her. She'll win an even-contact scenario easily; her flesh-and-blood body will recover from a shock much more quickly than Errant's complicated systems can reboot from total shutdown, if they even can at all. AEGIS teaches patience and observation in moments like these. And the Errant JuneBird is trying to save is the same one as the person JuneBird's counted on to know these things and keep her safe across countless missions together. "Victoria tried to kill me today. Because I wouldn't sell out my friends to her sick mob hits. And you know what happened then? Buddy and Bargain took her side! The entire fucking TAG squad mobilized and made me fight my way through the god damn hangar! I had squads of gunmen ambushing me every which way in the halls, Sasha! Did anybody try to talk? Did they ask what this was about? They tried to kill me! My corporation, my [i]entire fucking family[/i] tried to kill me! On Victoria god damn Messermitt's orders, they tried to kill me! Do you wanna know why I trust Sara? You wanna know why she gets another chance to hurt me? Because today when I had nothing in the world but enemies, she came for me! Not you, not anybody else! Just Sara! I [i]do[/i] see through her, you're the one who doesn't! She risked everything she had to come and help me! You've got no right to call her the bad guy!" That did it. Those were the words that broke the spell and ended the fight. JuneBird lunges forward with a swing so wild and powerful you'd think only a tank-woman like Maria could pull it off. Errant twists out of the way in the last possible instant, brushing so close against the charge she can feel her entire body tingle and slow down. She follows through and grabs JuneBird firmly by the arm and floods her body with 50,000 volts of electricity. She flicks her wrist to shut off the glove and catches Sasha before she can hit the ground. She walks several paces away from the weapon. This fight is over. She looks Sasha straight in the eyes. "I'll be honest with you, I have no idea how I'm going to feel about any of this when I wake up tomorrow. And that's [i]if[/i] I wake up tomorrow. But if there's one thing I know, it's that whatever I wind up feeling, she'll be there to feel it with me. She's not the bad guy. And neither am I. And neither are you." [Directly Engage: [b]10[/b]. Avoid blows and take her weapon (and Influence)]