She has come dressed for war.

No pretense of maintaining the illusion. No more synthweave pilot suits, no more hyper specific camera angles inside her cockpit to imply she has any of the setup or the skills of a normal pilot. No suicidal leap into the air right at the beginning of things. No long con or far-seeing strategies remain. All of that is useless now. It only ever existed to get her to this moment... no. Not even that. It was all for a fragment of hope: that this moment could exist in the first place, and that she would be allowed to step into it.

And now it is here. And she is here. And Solarel. Solarel has no need for a Mirror. A Whispered Promise is useless to her. That is why what greets her is a one-day defender. Simply, for the first time since the war ended, Mira. And she has come dressed for war.

Her hair is gathered up into tails. Not the fancy, intricate braids of the Terenian beauticians, but nine simple tails that sit clustered on top of one another, four in a row then two then three that lift her impossible waterfall of frosty white hair into a halo or a great crown. Each tail is decorated with a single token: a feather, a tooth, or a scale. Her lips are painted in blue, two simple vertical slashes just slightly misaligned from top to bottom. Beneath her eyes and down into her cheeks, her fur is painted in numerous shades of red and orange depicting setting suns dipping below the horizon of her liquid irises. 

Her dress is, of course, a Mayze Szerpaws original. The last ever Mayze Szerpaws original ("It. Is! Pronounced! Sure Paws!" she shrieked at the poor courier who'd delivered her a video tape, the last person ever to make that mistake), in point of fact. This one is made of crystal. Not just crystal dangling from thread to create the illusion of layers of 'fabric', but actual flowing gem in a constant sweeping rainbow of color. It wraps around her shoulders, where a pair of flamboyant spikes jut out to either side of her, and kisses her arms down to the wrist, in some places opaque and in others so dazzlingly clear that you'd swear you could touch her spots through it. 

It wraps across her chest and down her stomach, only flaring into a glittering battle skirt once it crosses the bottom of her hips, and all throughout the body are cut ovals of empty space that form patterns with her fur and the stone that neither the colors nor the glittering translucent windows could match on their own. But when she moves, the dress moves with her. Not in the sense that the material follows her movement or anything base like that - the dress [i]moves[/i] with her. That is to say it morphs and changes into new forms that highlight the new position she shifts into, changing the placement and arrangement of the openings and even outright reconfiguring itself to reflect a different idea of who she is. Here it is imposing armor, now it is the clinging, revealing suit of a mecha pilot, now it is a gentle brush of elegant color fit for a ball room or an art gallery, now it resembles a simple diving jacket.

It is her attempt at capturing what she'd considered to be the uncapturable. Incorporating Zaldarian nanotech into her attempts at bridging Hybrasillian and Terenian fashion culture not for flashy effect (...not [i]just[/i] for flashy effect) but to grab hold of the idea of the technology and the culture sprouting all around it. Something impermanent and forever at the same time, something [i]crafted[/i] but freely growing or shrinking or re-imagining itself on a whim. The form it takes upon her victory will be different from the one she'll wear on her defeat. It is a dress to be married in, a dress to cross blades in, and a dress to tumble down a hillside trading kisses in. 

It is the loudest expression of intent she is capable of. It is both what she is and what she wants to be, though those will forever be a hundred different things. It will never be 'for sale'.

For the Gods-Smiting Whip there is only a single difference in its loadout. Its armor is the same and its Tails twitch in anticipation of a battle as they float behind the main body. It still shifts about with the restless micro-twitching of a creature that can never sit entirely still. It has not sought to avoid being mirrored, it merely wonders if it can be. But it has traded Matty's knight sword for a much larger weapon. Still a sword to be sure, but something much more akin to the one wielded by Marcina Villajero, if much blockier and boxier in its construction. All along the "blade" are thin lines that imply the speed of its construction, and that it has been built around something rather than as it. But for now it is a sword, and a colossal and dangerous one at that. A charging swing from this at Mira's full thruster burn would snap the frames of many lesser machines. 

The meaning of it is obvious enough that there is no point in trying to conceal it. Always. Always one layer of defense.

Mira's lips twitch. A fang flashes out from under them.

> thank you.
> for making this worth the effort.
> it took a very long time.
> even with me screaming at the top of my lungs for months.
> i ask of you:
> was 'Nine Drive System' really too difficult of a puzzle?

The supermassive blade lifts from the arena floor with a loud crack that brings up chunks of the ground with it, scarring the battlefield before she's even made a move. The Gods-Smiting Whip holds it with both hands parallel to the ground and balanced against a hip. The form is simple by necessity, but dangerous by design.

> this is our final dance like this, Solarel.
> i have a wish and you are standing in the way.
> but i have a dream, also.
> a riddle?
> or a final promise if you prefer.
> at the end of today.
> one way or another.
> you and I will no longer say 'Speak Not'.