[b]Solarel[/b] “I desire a gift from the Empress you half-witted rust-brain” That one sounded sincere, pent-up anger and stress as Akaithon searches around, your careful thruster calculations ensuring that she doesn’t notice the extra load on her back. The Kathresis leans into this, it’s natural for it, and the stress is evident as Akaithon looks around ever more frantically. She inspects the remains of the gun she blasted. Really gone, not a decoy. “The Aeteline was a gift to you, a new empress took power and it was supposed to be a gift to me. Do you have any idea how beside herself the new empress was to learn that she could NOT gift the Aeteline to her champion? What do you think that did for her legitimacy in Instanilios? I’ll give you a hint, Solarel, it was not good.” She shakes her head in resignation, by far the most dangerous thing she’s done since you latched onto her. Just an inch further and you’ll come into her actual peripheral vision. Just an inch, but there’s nothing for it, just have to hope she’s too distracted to be looking closely at her own sensors or getting that feeling like there’s someone staring just over her shoulder. “Is it really so strange that I want to serve Naelkai? You know I knew her from before her ascension, do I really have to spell it out for you?” She doesn’t, not with that strained tone. She likes, no, she loves Naelkai as a person. Always has, but maybe you never saw the depths of that before. Before your banishment it was clandestine after all. Snuck in between missions, a history that stretched back to before she came to the Evercity. But you can see it here, Akaithon loves her empress at a level that few people can ever come to love royalty. The kind of love that’s personal and intimate and can only happen if you knew them and had a bond of mutual trust from before they had power. She fights for this love. She would gladly betray everything else she believes in for this love. If you wish to bring about such a betrayal, you’ll need to hurry, she’s stopped chattering to think and it’s not beyond her to figure out your ploy if she has time to consider. *** [b]Jade and Dolly[/b] “Ha, not bad!” The Unseen Goose fires its rear jets, righting itself after the kick, which has done little more than chip the paint. It seems that in her new version, Ada has simply committed what had once gone to the stealth suit into basic specs: armor and strength and speed. She races off after you, using the flicker of the landing and jump angle to pick an educated direction. It’s imperfect, your cloak is back in effect and she doesn’t know exactly where you turned. “I did watch your matches. You love your boasting and you’ve got the specs to back it up. Really care for each other two, I saw how you wouldn’t stab that other Hybrasilian who dressed like your priestess. That’s worth something and no mistake. Doesn’t mean you’re not spoiled rotten with all the blessings of your little empire though. Besides, if I got your tone right, you like being challenged for supremacy over that little priestess in there. It must not be fun to be the only one if charge if there’s nobody strong to prove you can conquer, right? So let me show you strong~” You can tell she’s enjoying this [[b]Take a string on Ada for your fine performance.[/b]] She’s not making herself an easy target as she speaks. Once that initial pass is finished, she begins breaking more machinery, the sound of her fists tearing through metal at high speed echoing through the factory and actually making it hard to pinpoint her through the debris. She’s leaving a trail of slag and wreckage as she moves, but where the carnage stops and the mecha starts is a tricky thing to figure. On top of that, as she moves she’s not just hitting machinery, she’s taking out supports and pillars and… …oh shit, the roof’s going to come down on top of you and no cloak in the world will help that one. She’ll have you pinpointed from how you come out of the rubble and it will take you longer than it will take her with all that strength to recover. If you think about it very hard, this is good, actually, in that she can only try this gambit once! If it doesn’t work then her best advantage will be lost and you’ll have open ground to maneuver (if a little unstable). So, you just need to make sure this doesn’t work! But she’s bringing this place apart fast, faster than you can fly out of it from the center of the factory, so you’re going to have to come up with something more creative quickly! *** [b]Isabelle[/b] Shattered metal rains down from the sky in little shards. For a brief moment of calm you have just the presence of mind to notice how pretty they are with the sun glinting off them, a rain of rainbow glitter that would make a great memory weave image. But that’s your autocannon, and your armor torn up, and you’re quickly running out of ways to keep this fight going. You’ve got a melee option on the reconfigured emberlight, right? Enough to block at least one of those two swords? “Yeah, how do you like that, huh?!” She comes in again, slashing and tearing open the arm plating, no longer protected. If that keeps up you’ll lose hand functionality entirely, you can already feel that unpleasant buzzing sensation in your actual hands that tells you the damage is coming through the neural link. “I’m a damn good pilot, and when I’m done ripping you up, I’m gonna make you squeal like Jade does until you shout it out for everyone. How do you like that, huh!” Oh yeah, she’s overconfident. She’s just coming in hard and fast with the slashes, taking everything she can get as fast as she can get it. Now’s the time to turn the tide. The only time. [Isabelle’s autocannon is destroyed, and her arm plating is damaged, exposing the hand mechanisms for the next attack.] *** [b]Mirror[/b] Oh she’d been watching the video. See her step forward when you jump? It slightly obscures one of her hands. Not even really obscures it, you’re in an open plain, but it makes one hand forward and one back and usually people don’t look at the back hand. They don’t notice it slip to the ionic net that could encase your tails and pull you to the ground. But, to Kiriala’s credit, the Ginger Tiger still doesn’t overcommit. She saw you coming down, but she didn’t put herself into the throw, didn’t overextend her muscles. Your throw still strikes true, it’s too fast and too unexpected to completely dodge. But the Ginger Tiger takes it on the side. There’s a high-pitched whine as the trident blows through the shields and then the satisfying deep sounds of metal compacting as it damages her. It rakes across the right arm and down the right leg as she pushes away, and the impact shatters its way up the trident handle as well. Everything is warped and broken from the strike, but she’s not down by any means. “Hooooooo” she breathes, and you can hear the awe. “What a compliment! You did that for me! Sacrificed that for me, broke your routine and everything! Wow, wow!” Her voice is giddy and a little higher and for sure this is the first time you’ve seen her roused to emotion. “Okay, alright, this is serious. Let’s gooooo!” And there she turns that into energy and she kicks it up a notch. The momentum that had been going into dodging the trident shifts. She lets herself land, uses her spear in the dirt to turn her momentum into a pivot and fires her thrusters even harder then pulls the spear out into a charge, still firing at you. It’s a creative take on a by the book play. Press an opponent, limit their movement with covering fire and strike a killing blow. She’s just…she executed on it really fast, with a mastery of her own mecha’s momentum and energy. It was faster than almost any huntress you’ve ever seen. It’s the sort of thing that happens in all sorts of sports. A straight throw of the ball isn’t anything special, but if it’s faster than anybody else can throw it, sometimes that’s enough to make it unstoppable. Still, your daring play meant that she had to make this correction. It might surprise you, but you’re pretty fast yourself. There’s an opening here if you can find it. Just a much smaller one than you might have hoped.