[b]Mirror[/b]

You bring the God-Smiting Whip out from a small cave where you were deployed and take in your surroundings, nine tails searching for any threats. Heavy rainforest. You’re in the wettest part of the biome. Huge leaves and vines hang from the trees over multiple layers. Perfect cover, but the ground is a wet slog to move through and a careless flight will snag your tails and give away your position. There’s a river system nearby with an open canopy and bright sunlight reflecting off it, but you’ll be exposed if you venture into it. No sign of your opponent. She could be right next to you or miles away and you wouldn’t know it. 

Here’s what you do know. Pilot matchups are announced a day in advance to offer some time for mental preparation and planning. Your opponent Valentina De Alcard pilots the Lonely Star. She’s a new pilot, not known in the scene, but you know she’s an independent originally from a consortium planet called Alcard (you don’t know all that much about TC naming, but being the same name as a planet you’re from probably means that you were one of the first people there, so maybe she’s from an important family or something?). 

You might have been to Alcard before if you’ve been doing fashion work in the Consortium for a while, since it’s a stopover to reach both the Outlast and Nadir systems, but you may have just flown past it. It’s not a very big planet and it has a dim sun, but it’s rich in rare earths and manufactures good munitions. 

All you know about the Lonely Star from the new pilot info you received is that it’s relatively small even for a gen 3 mecha and that it favors ranged weaponry. You can guess that being so small probably means that it gave up hull space that could have been used for a variety of weaponry and defenses in exchange for being able to put the maximum possible energy from its crystal fire drive into one gun (and possibly into speed now that you think of it). 

So, how are you starting off your match?

***

[b]Solarel[/b]
Today has been a rough day. 

First off, you woke up late and immediately saw that your opponent is another Zaldarian. You’re going against Nierka Stalok, who pilots the Sea Spike. You met her once before leaving while she was a pilot in training. She seemed enthusiastic and high energy back then. Now, she’s a hardcore loyalist for the new Zaldarian Empress Naelkai II, and all she’s really got on you is that you’re the villain and she’s the righteous hero. 

So that sounded like waking up to a fight where you’re going to get yelled at a lot for being a traitor without much listening. Then to make matters worse, one of the mechanics bumped into you in the prep hanger and you ended up blowing a hole in the wall next to him that didn’t repair itself so that probably left you a bit spooked and feeling drained before you even got in the cockpit. 

Also, your current mecha is also a hunk of junk (does it even have a name?) and syncing yourself with its body makes you feel slow. Not exactly slower than normal, but you’ve experienced the top of the galaxy in Aeteline, cursed though it was, and it’s really hard for “normal” to compare to that sort of high. 

When you come out, you’re on the sunset side of the planet, casting everything in deep reds and oranges. The rust tone actually reminds you a little of home too, as many a Zaldarian is naturally this color. Nierka isn’t trying to hide herself at all either. She’s come out of her spot near a small lakebed and is moving herself about ten meters in the air to stand clear and lit by the sunset, her own rust-red god seeming to meld with the light as she shouts a challenge over the comms.

What in the Empress’s name are you going to do?

***

[b]Isabelle[/b]

Well, this is awkward. Your matchup is with the famed pirate queen Jacinta Niares, leader of the Red Band Pirates. Except, only kind of maybe. You see, Jacinta is very very wanted. So wanted that even with the protection and diplomatic immunity extended to participants in the arena, she would need to worry about idiots taking a shot at her anywhere she went if her location were publicly known.

It seems, however, that she really wanted to enter this tournament and so she got a lot of people to enter the rookie round under her name. So you’re up against Jacinta Niares number six. Which [i]could[/i] be the real pirate queen. You don’t know! It’s also possible that Jacinta herself hasn’t entered at all and plans to take the spot of any of her proxies who advance. Or that statistics just aren’t with you and she’s off elsewhere being Jacinta Niares number eleven or something. But you have to consider that you may be facing off against the famed pirate queen and her berserker gatling style, so you need to be on the edge of your toes here. 

Just think about the jokes that the girls back home would make if you get wiped out in your first match. It wouldn’t even disqualify you, but it sure will set the tone. Even if you advance later, it will be “oh Isabelle, I heard your nerves got the best of you,” “Oh Isabelle, try not to trip coming in,” “Isabelle, everybody says you’re slow out the gate, but don’t worry big sister’s got your back!” Before you got in the cockpit though, Luca, Tadeo and Carmella Lozano all gave you a big hug and hopefully that support is carrying you forward as you go in here. 

Speaking of going in, you’ve got a dual puzzle to figure out for your match, both identity and terrain. If you really are against Jacinta and her mecha Roar, you need to figure out how to engage without getting blitzed, but you also have to consider that this might not be her and it might have a different loadout (Roar is extremely custom, you’ll know once you engage seriously if you got the real one or not unless she intentionally holds back and throws the match). The second part of the puzzle is how to work this complexity through the terrain. You’ve come into the arena already up high through an elevator that dropped you into the middle of the second canopy layer seven meters in the air. The upper trees are light enough here that you can see the daylight sky partially obscured, but no sign of Jacinta number six yet, and no way to know if she’s above or below you. 

She does, however, come over the comms with a voice that sounds like it comes from someone very muscular: “come and get me little mink!”

What do you do?

***

[b]Dolly[/b]

Jade absolutely set you up for this arena. There is no way, absolutely no way that this is a coincidence. You cannot come up with any other explanation for why your combat zone would be a stone village cleared out of the forest, in the middle of the night zone, lined with ritual torches along an open if mossy causeway almost ten meters wide that leads to a stone dais set above a reservoir. Almost exactly like a scene in a Hybrasilian pulp novel, in fact. You may or may not even have written a story that used a setting like this for religious rituals…or sacrifices.

At least the stars are beautiful here. You can see both Akar Prime and Akar Secundus high in the sky above you, Akar Prime looking like a gray shadow sprinkled with lights, and Akar Secundus with a slightly red tint to it as it reflects the light of Akar’s older sun. Beside them is a vast sea of stars sprinkling the sky. You’re near the Cerulean Belt here, nearer than you’ve ever been before, and you can see how it got the name as it offers a blue tint like water filled with diamonds to the night sky in a long wide slash of the horizon. It makes you think of old stories about hidden treasures on planets deep in nebulae and signs of the distant gods from ages long past. 

But there’s no time for thinking, you’re exposed out in the open like this and you can see your opponent! The Barn Owl, piloted by Angela Victoria Miera Antonius deployed on the opposite side of the causeway. This is actually a really advantageous range for her, not too far away for her guns, but not so close that you can instantly close. The torches paint a clear target too.

You know, if you had time to think, this might make you even more suspicious of Jade. She had expressed disappointment yesterday when you drew an opponent who was piloting a modified gen 2.5 TC mecha instead of the newer gen 3s. The Barn Owl is blockier and less pretty than many others, and someone craving the greatest challenge the Arena has to offer probably wouldn’t look here to start. Though if you underestimate Angela, she’ll surprise you!

So, how do you start your match?