The swords dance and flash - a dizzying display. 

It's funny, isn't it - how words can sometimes fail people - but actions can speak oh so clearly?

You can see it in the way she fights at first - with panicked desperation. Battle, real battle, is something that scares her. It's not surprising when you consider how she reacted to the pirates and their guns. What, with the potential for people to be hurt or killed, for destruction and death, who wouldn't find things at least a little bit scary? (Don't forget, she's only Terenian, and does not have your metal-hardened scales or a Hybrasillain's claws to protect her).

But as you two duel, the fear subsides. She parries and strikes with a more comfortable confidence. She presses forward. You realise that this battle, [i]this [/i]fighting, means something [i]different[/i]. In a world where everyone is armoured with dense alloys, where everyone stands tall on legs of steel and adamantine. When one's arms are strengthened with servos and hydraulics and where your own self lies protected in the pilot's cage - the worries just slip away. 

Fighting is one time where she can be free. Free of the fear that follows her whenever she's outside the cockpit. That dogs her steps as surely as the press. Battle is a means of escape. Of expression. Of testing skill and ability. This arena of toy robots and toy fights means she can fight as she [i]wants [/i]to be. Not as she's forced to be. By biology, position and expectation. By worries of collateral damage and hurt people. By fear of pain and loss.

Now, that answers your first question - what about the second?

Well, here the answer gets a bit harder ... In this fight, as she locks blades with you, swords sparking, you get the sense that she's trying to redirect you, keep you away from destroying more of the facility, of the history that lies unplumbed. She's fighting, in short, to protect. And in doing so, you can tell that she's fighting all the harder for it.

But still she holds back - she doesn't want to hurt you, strange as that may seem. She's only trying to put an end to the destruction.

If you want her to fight you truly - with all of her ability and heart? Then you may need to make her fight to protect something from you. Something she truly cares about. This facility and the pirates in it are not good candidates. They've hurt her too much and she knows too little about them. 

(To be clear, you might both still be surprised by her reaction should you threaten harm on them. But they just do not hold the strings on her heart to motivate her as deeply as some other things may)

Perhaps if you look further afield. Something in TC space. Her siblings or her charity work might give you more insights. It won't feel great, you may have to play the villain, but if you [i]really [/i]want that kind of a fight, then that's the price you'd have to pay. Provoke her, ultimately, to fight with all the strength of anger and fear.

But there might be a different way.

You can sense the chains restraining her as you fight - chains of fear, of responsibility, of her own guilt and anger. What do you know of her standing, family and destiny? Have you looked into them? Do you know how much they hold her back even as they shape her into the thing that they want her to be? How do you break these ideals? 

Well you're already doing some of that by simply showing her this adventure. Out here, in the blue expanse of Aoi, their pull on her is weakened - a moon far away from the celestial body she orbits. But that tether is as unbroken as gravity. They will pull her in again, eventually.

The truth is she cannot escape them, those ideals that enslave her, on her own. She is just not strong enough. For her to truly break their bonds, she needs someone to help her - to give her a push and to hold her free, lest she slip back into the well.

Do that, and she may fight you with a spirit freed of its shackles. And while she will still stay the final blow, she will fight you with all that she has - from a place of love.

Tell me though, Solarel, all this fighting - one has to wonder where it leads.

[i]Solarel, what do you hope is your future?[/i]

[i]And how can I get you to have a place for me in there?[/i]

[Rolling to figure out a person: 1 + 3 = [b]4[/b] - Will ask one of the Chosen's questions in addition to the one from Solarel's last move]