The head of the Gods-Smiting Whip pivots to point its cameras at its own shattered arm. If lifts that arm up and pulls its fingers into a fist one by one, testing how many of the individual servos and signal transmitters remained functional through the damage. One... on and a half fingers' worth. Her tails detach from either side of the arm, shuddering as they hover from the tremendous amount of power that just routed through them. They almost seem droopy as they glide back to their neutral positions behind the main body.

"...I see."

Mirror pivots the trident in her mech's good arm and, pivoting on a dime, lobs it high into the air. A moment later her ambush-tails come rocketing back to her, and she snatches one out of the sky without turning to check her position. All of her focus is on Valentina de Alcard and the Lonely Star.

"Compensating for lost power and combat capabilities. Get it right this time."

She takes the tail and rams it through the hole in Nine-Tails' arm, which sends bits of armor plating crumbling to the ground below. There's a nauseating screech in the air as she rips open several more connectors to make room for this bizarre addition, until after one horrifying moment she finally sees the hand shut down completely and go limp. A twist of the arm, a sharp thrust toward the ground: with a rush of blue light, the lodged tail fires an unfocused burst of light from both ends of its rifle-like structure. The light show flickers and extends into the shape of a massive kite. With a new shower of sparks it transforms, now a solid thing of raw light and power. No longer an arm, but a shield.

Utter disaster. She rockets forward with her arm extended out in front of her, twisting at odd angles as she flies to stay out of the direct path of that deadly barrel as it winds back up for what would surely be the victory shot from this range. Utter, utter disaster. This shield functionality was what she originally meant to test in the first place, it's why she baited the shot. She simply hadn't considered the possibility that she wouldn't finish the configuration sequence in time. She planned for a full power burst, she [i]wanted[/i] it... she'd caught her mouth on the barbs of her own pole.

Sequence one: shield slam. No more room for error. She entered this fight as a scientist, fought like a scientist, and then very nearly died like one. A prideful opponent. She'd expected patience, an opportunistic mindset. The sort of guileless cleverness you found in someone skilled enough to solve puzzles by slicing them in half, but then let that make them forget how to do it the more useful way. Somehow the reality of the woman in front of her was even cuter than that. Well, know what's good balm for an injured pride? A demonstration of the skill that gave her the space to conduct tests like this in the first place.

"Enemy targeting array: offline. Initiating close combat sequence, type three."

What follows is a demonstration. What follows is a dance. What follows is a lesson in what happens when you fight someone who has studied the properties of neural mesh much more diligently than you have. The Gods-Smiting Whip slides smoothly through the river and pops up underneath the Lonely Star. It kicks both feet into the riverbed and whips its shield-hand up into the face plate of the enemy mecha, and then lifts with its back to force the Lonely Star up into the air.

A flurry of punches and kicks. She pauses, poses, as if smiling, and in that precise moment her trident comes hurtling back down from the heavens. She catches it perfectly. Now her shield batters the colossal length of that deadly rifle first this way and that, and every time the momentum of the strike carries her off step she lights a thruster and spins around to slash with her beam weapon. She takes one arm, then the next. A leg. The chest, the stomach, the chest again. And again. And again. 

Every strike looks brutal to the cameras, there is no doubt. And the damage she causes is readily apparent. Her whirlwind cuts the Lonely Star's fighting capability in half without so much as needing a napkin to confirm the math on. But these strikes are calculated much more precisely than that. Where Nine-Tails strikes, it does so with an eye for how Valentina's mesh suit in her own control rig will respond to the shocks. Hard enough to trigger a sensory mute, but careful not to let any one strike numb her completely. 

This is a form of dance that Mirror has tested extensively. A thousand hours of training to create this one specific skill, shown only to worthy opponents with superior talents of their own. Valentina's world is transformed into a song of teasing fang bites and flicking swords. Slicing off her armor, piece by piece. Exposing her. Admiring her. And in the spaces where she's bared, the shield touches her and sends waves of energy rippling through the Lonely Star that her suit will interpret similarly to fingers on her skin. Touching. Caressing. Squeezing. Pinching. 

It's over. The only question is how dignified her opponent is in defeat. The Gods-Smiting Whip pins the Lonely Star in among the rocks of the riverbed, pressing its lithe frame against the torso of the TC mecha, slowly sliiiiiiding along it with a shower of sparks and a scraping of paint. Her shield arm is planted deep into the earth, and her weapon arm is bend impossibly behind her, pointing that trident straight at the cockpit. Half threat, but half invitation. 

"Well fought, Little Warrior," Mirror purrs over the public comms, "Would you like your reward now, or later?"

Floating behind her, seven tail modules spread out in undulating patterns. They ripple in what might be amusement or might be pride. The tip of each pivots toward the Lonely Star, and gleams with the promise of untold pleasure. The kind that only comes from submission.

[Fight w/ Daring: [b]9[/b]. Mirror flirts and takes a string, and seizes superior position]