[i]"We have work to do." The room looks up at her, surprise on the faces of the techs to see her back at the mech bay so soon after dismissing them. They'd been packing up, ready to head back for the night now that the regular checkups and maintenance were completed. Unfortunately, they'd be pulling overtime. "Asil, Chief Tomas, I need you two to take Asil's drone tech and incorporate it into Emberlight tonight." she continued, not wasting any time. The chief, well used to such demands on his time, just nodded, while the young woman's eyes bulged. "Tonight?" she exclaims and Isabelle spits her with a gaze that makes her wilt a little. "I mean, we only just finished the show - I only just signed on? And you want us to translate fashion tech into your mecha in one evening?" "Welcome to the big leagues Asil" she replies, stiffly, "You said wanted resources, didn't you? Well you'll have them - but it just means the expectations for what you can do and how long you get to do it will only get higher." "I'm matched against Ada tomorrow - in an urban environment - I need a way to bait her out and there's only one target a woman like her will break cover for; me. So I need a convincing decoy." she turned to look at the rest of the team, her hands fisting at the small of her back. "We only have tonight to implement it, so it's time to step up everyone. We pull this off and tomorrow we could be marking the exit of one of the greatest combatants that are taking place in this tournament. Let's make every second count."[/i] --- The piloting capsule of Emberlight is at once an overwhelming barrage of information and an oasis of calm - the white walls of the spherical cockpit are pristine and featureless. If Emberlight were powered down Isabelle could just float there - attached only by the gyroscopic stabilisers - and feel a universe away from all her troubles. (She may, in fact, have done just that in times past when things just got too much). Now, with the mech in full combat readiness, countless readouts are displayed both on the projectors and on her heads-up visor. It would have been too much for anyone to parse had their flight hours not been well into five digits. For Isabelle though, it was all second nature - the kind born of such intense training that lessons and instinct had now merged. She could feel the gravel beneath Emberlight's feet give way as the mech started to scale one of the broken down buildings. She heard the clicks as the long-arm plasma lance deployed. Effective and fast, that's what she needed right now - a hope to end this with one shot. --- [i]"It's impossible!" Asil was groaning, leaning back in her chair, away from the third coffee that had been discarded on the dash. "Resolution and lag break down the whole array when it gets more than a few meters away." Isabelle had to bite back a sharp retort - that giving up was for quitters, that she had thought Asil wanted a challenge. It was hard and had it been anyone other than the [s]cute [/s] new engineer she might have let it out. The drones were indeed a work of art, but trying to integrate them in a way that could project a convincing decoy of Emberlight was proving difficult. "Maybe we just focus on something closer in then - enough to throw off a shot rather than something fully autonomous." she said instead. "Oh, you mean like one of those shadow-cats from Fantasy Battle World?" she replies, which can only cause the socialite to regard her with a blank expression. "Sorry, I'm guessing that you haven't played it. It's a game for ... I mean ... the creatures in it have this special ability ..." "I think I can guess." Isabelle replies, cutting her off, turning back to her workstation and swearing that she'd never disclose that she'd signed on to a trial account a few years back when her parents weren't watching. "Yes, let's try something like that."[/i] --- The drones hum to life, moving into formation around her and causing an identical Emberlight to shimmer into existence in front of her and behind. It was no hybrasillian stealth system, but it had the advantage of not drawing as much power - she could still fight while using it, until and unless the prototype burnt out. --- [i]"It keeps burning out." grumbled Isabelle. "The array keeps feeding back into the port capacitors and building up a resonance cascade that shorts them out after a few minutes." "Oh, that's easy to fix" says Asil who has somehow just appeared looking over her shoulder "Just pull it out and bypass it to the exhaust. I had the same problem with the dresses, on a smaller scale of course, but the capacitors don't really need to hold the discharge on the scale of a mecha, and any thermal signature wouldn't be noticeable." "Ah! Um ... yes. That ... That could work." she replies, her voice a combination of genuinely being impressed with the woman's solution and startled at her sudden proximity. "Let's ... let's try that."[/i] --- Isabelle took a deep breath. Engineering, like battle, was sometimes an exercise in experimentation. Trying new things to see what would stick, what would be successful. Now was the chance to try something nobody in this tournament had seen before. Break for cover, when the shot comes she'll have a moment when Ada's weaponry recharges to land her own. A snipers duel to open the fight, to set the field for the next step in their dance. As to what step that would take, well, TC mechs have a number of options when it came to that - after all, they are more general mobile weapons platforms than their more specialised Zaldarian and Hybrasillian contemporaries. [b]Ada [/b]- Isabelle has been talking to you on and off as this happens - Her answers though are somewhat robotic, as if she knows you're trying to distract her, or if she's giving you the show she thinks you want to see. That of a young woman with ambition and desire to win this competition more than anything. However, she's still new to this and the need to focus on the fight is showing those lies for what they are - a shell - a shield. This woman is a little toy soldier, wound up and sent to this battle for reasons other than her own. She doesn't want anything from this tournament. Not really. That said, there is genuine joy in her eyes as she pilots Emberlight against you - while winning might give her a thrill of validation, and notwithstanding whatever else is out there that might make her heart soar, it's the simple act of [i]piloting [/i]that really brings her happiness right now. She wants to run, to jump, to fly. She just wishes she weren't constrained to only this battlefield to do it. [While we're on the subject - spending the second question from the last roll to ask what does Ada think of Adriana]