[center][h1]------- The Second Match -------[/h1][/center] [b]Mirror[/b] The clock is ticking down. The cameras are already taking photos. The God-Smiting Whip is the subject of much speculation, as well as the damage inflicted after the last battle. Camera drones are zooming in on the repairs and commentators back on the Akarian planets on stream three are questioning whether there’s a weak point to be targeted in their pre-match banter. There are potentially lots of other things to have on your mind. If you were checking the local network for gambling, the bets are primarily on the odds of Solarel’s tactics (see below for that). If you are interested in Valentina, her match today starts after yours so you don’t know how she’s done or what she’s doing with her time at the moment. Possibly watching you. She’s facing one of the Jacinta Niares proxies and Valentina is expected to win. If it’s Mayze, there’s a lot of chatter, plenty of orders, maybe a few gems if you want to go digging through her messages but nothing that stands out on first pass. When you come out, you’re on the hill in your arena looking over the terrain. It’s a stepped terrace, each step about the height of your mecha. There are thick clouds drifting over the upper parts, barely ten meters over your head. The clouds are drizzling lightly, the drops pattering off the surface of your mecha in an even, soft pitter pat. Solarel is exiting the hangar at the same time as you are. Unlike with Valentina’s small and well-camouflaged mech (not up to Hybrasil cloaking, but nevertheless impressive for its quality) the Bezorel is easy to detect. Your instruments indicate that she’s due south and entering via coming up from a platform raising her into a river delta surrounded by jungle. That said, it’s too rainy to see her with visuals at this distance. Also, you could broadcast to her safely if you want to talk. [b]Solarel[/b] The clock is ticking down. Camera drones in your hangar have been scrambled with several different levels of zoom lenses so they don’t have to be placed at risk should you exit your mecha again. Possible perhaps, but do they really think you’re going to pull the same trick twice? Currently, they’re trying to get their money’s worth and get a look at you inside the Bezorel. The early match commentary on your end is that on paper, the match looks pretty hopeless, the Bezorel is simply not a piece of equipment up to its task. There’s been quite a bit of gambling-backed speculation on what you might try to win the match, with a focus being more on your tactics than their efficacy. Since you probably checked the local network, the current best odds are on some kind of brilliant jungle ambush with complex traps. They’re giving that one 1:2 if you do it. Self-destructing your own mecha while repeating the pilot jettison trick from last time is 2.5:1. Someone did predict the missiles, but they’re at 6:1 because nobody thinks you have the money for them, and sabotaging your opponent’s mecha is at a whopping 25:1. If the sabotage actually becomes known rather than appearing accidental, you stand to make the very astute, the very well informed, and the very lucky bettors quite a bit of money. You are raised up to your arena via an elevator platform. You come out through the water into a river delta that marks the south end of your battle area. The river meanders north with jungle terrain around it, not too heavy. It’s cloudy and drizzling as well, the rain smudging the upward facing parts of the Bezorel’s old-fashioned cockpit. That’s unfortunate for you because with your neural link, that also means the rain is sort of like getting water in your eyes fogging your vision. Unlike in your previous match where your opponent challenged you to an honorable duel, you are Mirror are supposed to be deploying at the same time. You know broadly that she should be north of you because you deployed in the far south of your available battlespace, but between the Bezorel’s weak instruments and the visual interference, you don’t have a pinpoint on her exact location yet. Also don’t forget you can broadcast wide-frequency open comms if you want to talk to her even though you don’t know her location yet. *** [b]Isabelle[/b] Congrats, you’re the number one show today. Ada is, really, but you’re no slouch either. This is the feature match, they think you can at least give her a good run and draw things out. This will be tough though, Ada Smith is a legend among pirates and TC crews alike. Camera drones are snapping everywhere and a lot of this match will be monitored closely. You step Emberlight out of what seems like the overgrown garage of a five story building. You have to brush aside some hanging vines and moss to exit. You’re in a ruined urban zone. Most of the buildings are covered with plants, some are knocked down, several have chunks missing causing their interior floors to be open. Most aren’t much taller than four or five stories though: bigger than Emberlight a couple times over, but you could hop onto a roof no problem if you don’t mind exposing yourself. It’s hot and the sky above you is cloudy, blanketing everything in a generic whitish gray coloring. Scan is very limited in this type of setting: anything using sound or light waves is going to bounce around the buildings and give you no real distinction between crumbling bits of masonry and your opponent. Higher frequency radiation won’t penetrate through the layers of stone and concrete. Eyes and ears are your best friends, and if you’re lucky and your mecha AI is good, you could have it dedicate cycles to looking for tremors or building vibrations to try and triangulate. That does present the risk of having most systems running calculations at the exact moment you get punched in the face though. But then again, there’s nothing about this that would make you any easier to find for Ada. Try to keep it that way, big bursts of heat or noise are risky because they’ll give away your position. Of course, Ada has a stealth system and you don’t, so perhaps you’d like to simply get that pain out of the way first, hope you can take the hit, and start fighting back. Her dark face and strong, heavyset shoulders pop up over your comms, background replaced by a soothing dark blue for the transmission so you can’t use any details to try to figure out where she is. “Lonzano, you’re new right? Pleasure to meet you, really, I’ve heard great things. My company, the Snow Geese, would be happy to take work from your family if any presents itself. I don’t think any of my girls have worked with you before, though they don’t tell me all their side jobs. Now, I know everyone says that we’re pirates,” she gives a solemn nod here. “But personally I think that’s just an unfortunate description of having to manage an independent company in this trying universe. We’re happy to take legitimate work when it presents itself, and I hope today’s match gives you a show of our skill.” *** [b]Dolly and Jade[/b] This match is being eagerly watched by the Hybrasilian contingent. Two different rookies from an overall smaller pool of combatants, and a match like this has hunting lodge status implications. Some people are worried the draw was unfair, that one of you has to hurt the other’s odds of advancing. In terms of overall billing, it’s lacking a big name draw like Solarel and Ada though, so you’re around middle billing, it’s being broadcast on stream 6 at the moment on the Akarian planets. The announcers for this one are both Hybrasilians who are themselves a little green at the commentary business. You’re deploying directly into dense forest. You literally walk out of a humongous tree whose bottom was structured by the planet nanobots to allow for a hangar entrance. Sunlight trickles down through the layers of canopy: clear sky if you want to maneuver at that height. You’ve got no signs of movement in your immediate vicinity. Many of these matches are asymmetric deployments to ensure some variety in the flow of the fight, and in your case you have the opportunity to take a position and get in the first word when Ksharta deploys. What do you have to say for yourselves?