[b]Solarel[/b] “She what? But you…you betrayed her, betrayed us! She, she said. She said you were too loyal to Voctine. The Aeteline belongs to the empress! She can’t…she can’t steal it from her own knight. Trying to keep it would have been the betrayal! I…that’s what I thought. I didn’t…isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Didn’t you…I…Sol, I…what happened? What did you, what did she do? Why were you banished?!” She lets out a shout then, and shakes herself, the sudden movement making it difficult to keep the Kathresis in place. She rushes suddenly sideways looking for you, looking for some way to confront you. “Damn it Sol, if it was all this bad why didn’t you ever contact me?! Why did you leave and make all those deals? Losing your mecha, going in debt to one Terenian after another just to stay in the fight without our support. For what? A Hybrasilian? Don’t you care about your own people? Don’t you care about me? You think you can…can act so high and mighty but who did you turn to when you were in trouble? None of your friends! Nobody who even knew you! Maybe you should enlighten me how you managed to pull out of the teachings of Zaldar that you should betray two empresses! [Akaithon marks guilty.] *** [b]Mirror[/b] “Huh.” The Ginger Tiger leaps to its feet, jumps away as you ignite the tails, considering your words even as it maintains the high energy of the last few moments, turning its recovery into an attempted encirclement that probes for weaknesses. A beep indicates that tails 4, 5, and 6 are available, which is admittedly a lot more coincidental than getting 1,2,3 to start. Maybe the system is weighted to favor the tails activating in numerical order with only a little randomness. Or maybe it picks a different pattern each time and just happened to settle on numerical order this time, with that choice being only a single random choice rather than six separate ones just happening to work out. “I accept” comes over the comms after a brief silence as Kiriala looked for an opening, changing heights and angles rapidly but never striking. “This may be a mistake, I have the most profound feeling that I just allowed myself to get perfectly played by agreeing to this match on your terms. But I don’t care because I want to see what you’re offering. So I accept, the match will play out on your terms.” She goes then into the same move as before. Nearly identical, high speed, covering fire. She wants to see if you’ll do the same thing or not, wants a sense of whether your choice of response relates to your rules. She might be guessing that one of them is about how you respond to certain attacks. If you do something completely different, it will tell her something about what restrictions you’re not under. It’s almost a taunt. Are you going to trick me or show me something honest~? That’s what’s being asked. [She will take a string and spend it immediately, asking the question “what will it take for you to reveal your strategy for this new set of match rules?”] *** [b]Isabelle[/b] “No. No! Fuck. FUCK. ARE YOU SERIOUS?” Ksharta didn’t want this. She did get overconfident, tried to pick you apart and didn’t think there’d be some hidden trick. But this, this isn’t just that she’s breaking down, you’ve immediately turned the tables and lorded it over her and this isn’t fun anymore and and and and She writhes, slams against the rope, manages a knee into the Emberlight’s stomach, knocking the wind out of you as you come around, giving her a second. She uses that second to take her still free arm and…rip her other arm off from the elbow, cutting the trap loose from its anchor point as she flies away. That had to hurt. A lot. Mecha dull pain relative to the neural mesh, but you know that pins and needles feeling. She just did that suddenly, a shock would have run through her whole arm before it went completely numb from the elbow down. Some pilots would black out from that. Many would throw up. “You SERIOUSLY think you can just make a joke out of me? Seriously?” The Pulsar Cat lowers its head and you can tell the pilot is shaking with some combination of fury and shame. Her good hand pounds herself in the head. “Gods, gods! I tell you what I’m here for, I try to tease you and play with you and you immediately try and make the same joke that Jade did. I’m pathetic. I’m so stupid. Stupid stupid stupid Ksharta. Not worth anything but making soup for the bigger, faster girls. Why does everyone fall for Jade when she does this?! What am I doing wrong? Fine, fuck it, fuck you!” She’s coming for you, as hard as she can, no more toying. You have time to draw your weapons with all of this, your advantage bought you that much. You get to choose how to meet her. In fact, you can almost certainly win this match from this position, she’s down an arm, down a weapon, distracted, emotionally a wreck, it’s really not that hard. It’s just, here’s the thing. This is a moment of clarity for YOU, Isabelle Maria Lozano de la Estrella. Do you see how your mother’s strategy, while absolutely effective for winning this match, took no account of the emotional impact it would have on your opponent? This isn’t a one-off. This isn’t a fluke. This is your life. This is your past and at this rate it’s going to be your future. Almira Lozano cares for power and no person will get in the way of that for her. If you follow her advice forever, you will have power. And with it, a life that is an endless string of agonies. Agonies that you receive and agonies that you inflict. That will all fall at your feet. Is that your choice? [Ksharta takes Insecure and emotionally loses it completely, escalating to a desperate final attack. You take Guilty. And a reminder. Many people are watching these matches. What you do here will be momentous.] *** [b]Jade and Dolly[/b] You slide desperately, coming in under a huge storage tank as it’s collapsing. It’s better than some spots, you take no real damage, the hollow tank curls around you instead, its rounded shape helping to ensure other debris slides off it rather than punch through it, though it does slowly begin to crumple as dust and cement builds up on top of it. There’s a silence as you lie there, but you can’t just sit here and wait, if you don’t come up you’ll be declared disabled and lose the match! So you groan and strain and push the tank off you, dust sliding in and obscuring your vision. It grew heavy with the collapse, the top caved inwards so that now you’re trying to push a tank full of cement slabs, which even with a crystal fire drive is a bit of a difficult effort. Thus it’s as your pushing and straining, your arms occupied above your head, that you feel the cloak ripped off you. Ada did indeed use her superior strength combined with her knowledge of what she was doing to get out ahead of you, find where the rubble was shifting, and use your moment of vulnerability to take what she was after. There you are, revealed for the cameras, covered with loose, white-gray chalky dust. And there’s Ada and the Unseen Goose II, right on top of you, your cloak ripped from your back. She pulls to the side, holding it triumphantly and all you can do is crane your neck to look at her without dropping the whole tank back on yourself. You’re in a very vulnerable position, arms up and body bare for her, the only thing keeping her from the decisive blow the fact that she doesn’t want that storage tank to fall on her either. But the second you finish freeing yourself, she’s going to be on top of you. “Need a hand there, princess~?” she asks, taking a stance just out of range of the rubble as she watches you struggle and newly on display for everyone.