The damage she takes is far from superficial. Coolant lines, sensors, armor plating, power conduits, all of these sustain significant damage. Another combo like that and she will not only lose, it might actually kill her. There is no actual defense against the Aeteline's twin swapping swords, so Mira simply doesn't. She protects her core systems by predicting the optimal angles of the blade coming toward her and shifting her thrusters to push herself just barely off target. 

The temperature in her cockpit soars. The lights around her dim. A variable input delay between 8 and 120 milliseconds is introduced, which requires numerous adjustments on her part to not slip out of the acceptable range of reaction times. Predictive power spikes in importance as a result. But she can fight. In the moment this is all that matters. 

Her counterattack finally comes: the space creating bottom-to-top vertical swing from her sword, and then a rapid pivot horizontal slash that takes advantage of the stored momentum and the super-large nature of the weapon to deliver maximum kinetic force to the Aeteline's head. The crack is audible over every camera. Mira's lips lift into their first true smile before they settle into their first true frown as she watches her opponent bounce across the river like a skipping stone toward an urban section of the environment. She rockets after Solarel a tongue click later.

Her sword has taken by far the worst damage in the exchange. Massive sections of the hastily assembled, ultra heavy blade crumble off the sides and the tip as she flies, and the ones that don't shatter simply drop off when the pieces holding them on do. What's left is... beautiful. A glittering, unblemished fullerene tube the size of a spear growing out of her sword hilt. Mira hefts it onto the Gods-Smiting Whip's shoulder and follows up with a hard knee, instead. Evidently she does not intend to use it as a weapon. 

But this is. Well. Perhaps calling it 'expensive' is a bit of a non-sequitur to a duo like Solarel and the Aeteline. But this tube was grown in a Hybrasil mineral system. It is a complicated structure, extremely difficult to produce and agonizingly slow to complete. For a culture like hers that places so much emphasis on individual (allegedly) irreplaceable constructs, the resources required for this shimmering rainbow tube are far beyond what she should be capable of.

That is correct. Mira of the Fisher Clan did not fashion this 'weapon'. Neither did Selin of the Makers clan, though both had their paws in its design. No, this required outside agents. A top engineering clan on a planet in full standing in the empire of Hybrasil. The sheer number of chain favors she must owe to fashion this is staggering; the cost of keeping it this secret even moreso. Someone with Mira's resources could only make this happen through the deliberate grinding of mercenary contracts, pressing her skills into use across the galaxy. Services delivered exactly as requested, payments taken exactly as demanded. Until she had this. 

"Nine Drive System, Partial Configuration. The Third Form: Threads of Fate!"

She refuses to use her glittering superweapon. Two new Tails join the free-flying ones from earlier in the fight, and together they spiral around the Aeteline. The Third Form: another binding technique. Connective barriers of force similar to her earlier nunchuck technique extend between pairs of Tails and spiral around the Aeteline. They are vulnerable to the anti-tails like this, but for the moment the main body of her opponent is paralyzed at the shoulders, elbows, and knees. 

The Gods-Smiting Whip does not close for a melee strike. It flies away and knocks over a building instead, hiding in the smoke that plumes up all across the streets. 

> i do not intend for this to be the stage of your defeat.
> i am simply buying time. 
> have you guessed my trick yet?
> if not, keep watching~