Solarel's heart burned. She saw the shape of Mirror's heart more clearly. Felt sympathy more deeply. Saw a wound she wished she could heal.

But she couldn't. Because Mirror was wrong. She was the nightmare that Solarel had feared. Everything she'd done had been for her and it wasn't even close to enough. There was only one argument she could make and it wasn't with words or compassion. It was with her blade. With her will. With her absolute desire to win, with her willingness to hold nothing back in this fight.

And with her defeat.

Because ha ha, holy shit, she was losing. There hadn't been anything of honour in her confession. It had been another dirty trick, an attempt to force the tempo, to box in Mirror's crushing, liquid thoughts. Make the fight about what she could do with the Bezorel's tools, make the thought about the possibilities within this aged coffin, distract from the unstoppable power and precision that was the result of all of Mirror's dedication and practice. Make the fight about me. Make the fight about me, what I can do, what I am to you. Fight my battle. Don't fight the one you prepared for.

Don't fight the one where you dispatch the girl in the sixty year old rust bucket without thinking. Don't fight the one where I never have a chance. Don't let your gaze lift upwards from my face to look at that distant sky...

She is fighting with her legs now. They swing up on hinges they're not designed for, feeling the screaming of bending metal as she raises stomping feet for a defensive kick. She fires the thrusters on her feet at point blank as Mirror closes, using the blue-hot thruster plume as an improvised thermal lance that carries her back out of the range of that trident. As she hurtles backwards she's firing missiles at weak points in the canyon wall; their impacts shatter the valley walls and bring the avalanche crashing down...

This was meant to be a moment of awe. A glorious moment that made her opponent freeze, dazzled, that made her forget that she was a goddess. 

Now it represented, if she was lucky, a tactical retreat. 

"Of course you'd lose!" said Solarel amidst a rage of crimson lights. "That's the only thing that [i]could [/i]make you lose! I can't win unless you become someone different! Someone different I could solve! Someone different I could beat! Someone different I could make look at me until they couldn't see anything else!"

[Fight: 2, 2 +1 [b]5[/b]]