She's terrified. She'd acted without thought, without seeing it. An act of emotion and not stratagem. The tell - using the Zero-Point Weapon to alter the environment to her advantage as an opening gambit. Relying on the wrong instincts to stall while she recollected herself and recharged her primary weapon. She of all people should have known to never underestimate the sheer power of the charge.

The only thing that saves her is that Akaithon isn't her. Isn't Solarel. Isn't Mirror. She invests too much power in the shields, too much stance in blocking the debris. If she'd studied harder - if she'd seen, if she'd [i]known[/i] - she'd have accepted the damage to her mech as the lesser price to pay. She'd have come on with every bit of power she had in that moment of weakness and the battle would have been over before it began. Mirror wouldn't have invested any points in health. Mirror would have struck her down in a microsecond and been disappointed by the result. She's terrified. In this moment over the abyss she saw herself with absolute clarity. Saw the sloth in her brain. Saw the malicious vine of habit. Saw herself with the clarity only possible in this place on the boundary between divinity and scrap metal. 

[Defy Disaster: 5+1 Grace +1 Forward from Wicked Past; a [b]7[/b]]

But Akaithon didn't see it. And the difference between seeing it and not is everything. 

The blade takes the Zero-Entropy Weapon - the crystal-cold device that is the key to her offense - and carves it into a mess and tangle of nanobots. In the cloud of particulate destruction, in the chaos of debris from the breaking station, in the speed of the Kathresis' movement at full burn she steps forward, under the tall arm of the Makhaira -

Out from her gaze for just a second.

- And then back. And then up.

She clamps onto the Makhaira's back. Her reactor is dark and invisible. The added weight is impossible to judge with no gravity. The Makhaira is twice the size of the Kathresis and can easily lift her, especially if she adds her own thrust subtly to balance any lowering of acceleration. When Akaithon spins around to follow through she finds the Kathresis gone, as though it had teleported or become invisible. In place of either Solarel is clinging to the Makhaira's back, heart pounding in her ears, disconnecting her neural link for a moment so she can bite her knuckles and thereby discharge the absolute, pounding manic terror. 

She'd gotten lucky. A habit. A lack of respect. The fact that that pounding electric guitar in Akaithon's cockpit had muffled the impact of metal on metal. She clung on with sheer audacity. 

And audacity demanded that she continue talking.

"How else could it be?" said Solarel, staring directly into the painted heraldric crest in the centre of the Makhaira's back. A world as the pupil of an eye. Her words bounced off ten thousand pieces of debris before reaching Akaithon in case the latency of the reply give her away. "You desire the Goddess of War. What trinkets could buy her? What lord could offer her?"

But now the problem: she didn't have any way to turn this position into a victory. With the Zero-Entropy Weapon she could have charged a full shot and unloaded it point-blank into the Makhaira's back, a finishing blow. Without it her twin swords could wound but not kill, her point defense weaponry and drones could annoy but not wound, her lance was outright useless. Damn Akaithon for putting points in health.

So, while Akaithon was turning her full attention to scanning the debris field, stance shifting constantly, ready for attack from any direction, Solarel sighed. She knew what she had to do.

"So, Akai, my daring knight, my high rider," said Solarel, adjusting her helmet and cracking open the cockpit of the Kathresis. "We've got some time until you make a mistake. So tell me. You're going somewhere. You're going somewhere and you need the Aeteline to get there. Where? What could you possibly need all that power for?" if not for defeating me? If not for defeating Mirror? 

As she spoke she slipped out into the void, climbing from one mech to the other. It was time for delicate, slow sabotage. To gently run her hands over every part of the Makhaira's divine body. To touch her hidden places and break her fragile things. While Akai talked and searched she would work until her lover seized up and her legs became weak and her oxygen failed, making her gasp for breath with Solarel's name on her lips. 

But slowly. Slowly. For this girl she needed to slip under her armour without her noticing. Needed to occupy her conscious, chattering, thinking mind with puzzles and riddles and games even as the lace ribbons that held her underwear together came apart beneath her fingers. To steal her bones so that all that was left was water, pouring out of that suit of armour, helpless. Slowly. I was wrong to try and love you in any other way.

[Figure out a person: 8. What do you love most? What are your feelings towards battle? How could I get you to betray your ideals?]