The ultimate strategy was just being better than your opponent.

It sounded oxymoronic but it was true. When your raw stats were superior new options became available. There were entire tactical sequences that hinged off relentless exploitation of a single advantage. If you move fast enough you can cut corners that others would find necessary, which lets you move faster still, compounding a tactical advantage into a strategic rhythm with the continuous buildup of combat momentum. Be inside the guard while it is being raised. Be past the smokescreen before it breaks contact. Kill your opponent before they kill you. This was the ultimate lesson of Anime. The strongest warrior was not the most creative or clever, they were gimmick bosses who would soon leave the story. The strongest warrior was the samurai who won even as their opponent's blade descended.

She makes contact and the blow comes like a hurricane. Gold into silver into gold into both, katana and wakizashi. One layer of defense. A fight ends in a single blow. Every other strike is just the sequence that leads inevitably to the severing strike where the lovers at last embrace, bound at the hilt, whispering their intimate goodbyes into each others' ears. 

Was that what Mirror meant? Was that what she wanted? To speak freely in that moment when her blade was inside her rival and she was no longer an outsider? Was that the only way? Her focus was absolute. She could not question.

This was how to win. This was how to win. Nothing but the fight. Nothing but the win. Every time she'd come close to defeat was because her opponents had fought like this. No room for thought. No room for anything but skill. No room for anything but her best, absolute, maximal expression, everything she was in the tip of the blade. This was who she was. This was how she wanted to fight. This was her heart. Each blow was her love, screamed into the air and carved into the bones of the earth. Just like she'd promised.

She's slow. 

The Aeteline filters the Pilot's intentions, maintaining its own situational awareness at the cost of the total onslaught. It does not trust the pilot, her total collapse into the flow of violence, the blindness of her passion. Mirror had caused this state in the Pilot, this mad joy - she must have counted on it, courted it, built her trap around it. But the Aeteline was wiser than that. It would accept the loss of speed if that meant seeing the hidden blade when it came. It only needed to see the trick to stop it, and once beaten then the fight would be an execution.

There was no place for individual expression. Perfection meant making no mistakes. A strength was also a weakness. The Aeteline had neither.