The loser got to decide the shape of its victory.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter. Defeat was defeat, by an inch or by a mile. Destruction was destruction, be it by her blade or her enemy's suicidal detonation. The Aeteline scorches directly towards the prismatic, reality warping explosion in the sky. Did you not learn? The sacrifice of the pilot is a small price to pay for victory. Did you not learn? Did you not think I would use that maneuver again? Did you not learn what perfection lo ook s li --jtke --- 

Amidst the centre of the prismatic distortion is a rupture where colour itself burns away, all refraction stripped from the Aeteline's shadowed plating. Rainbow energy penetrates its cheeks, cuts its neck, pierces its shoulder, cuts away the armour and exposes the shrieking turbine heart of the Aeteline. Its hands reach up, to shield itself or pull the detonating sun from the sky. The Aeteline does not scream in pain or in triumph as it watches its opponent die before it does. Victory is registered as merely the the smooth confirmation of a variable before its entire upper quadrant was vaporized.

*

She can't breathe.

This... isn't a new thing. She's not sure she ever learned how. Nose to the ground as she clawed her way through the hurricanes of the Stormlands. Silent and alone in a city of lies. Lungs filled with suspension fluid, held in the inertialess core of her God. She's never needed to breathe to survive.

Her eyes open dimly, looking up at the wreckage of the heavens.

She's hungry. She's tired. She's not ready for this. Her swords are in her hands, following her even through the end of divinity, but her arms are too weak to wield them. She did not think that this would be her battlefield. She... doesn't know what to do. As she races the sonic boom to the ground her mind is empty of the vast superstructure of knowledge and prediction that weighed on her so heavily. Five minutes ago she had known the future. Now she...

She saw the diamonds. She saw the lace. She saw the most beautiful girl in the galaxy coming towards her. She couldn't breathe. She was unprepared, unadorned, heartless, having thrown everything away for victory on the wrong battlefield. Her hands relaxed, swords starting to drift away from her, sparkling into trails of nanobots, surrounding her in dust like teardrops. She saw...

For the first time in her life she took a breath in. She needed it if she was going to laugh. She needed to laugh because she'd just seen the section staff in Mirror's hands. It escaped from lips silenced by wind and wave and fear like a long buried prisoner's first glimpse of sunlight. 

Her hands tightened around her swords. She took a battle stance, back towards the approaching earth. Her limbs were stiff and her scales were dull and she did not have any sort of mental framework or theory of victory. She was at every disadvantage. She was the weaker. She was the lesser. There was only one technique that could answer all of this. Only one way to turn this back into something like a battle of equals.

"I love you." It took work to say it through the suspension fluid that still caught in her throat, twisted her stomach, made her veins crackle hypersensitive to electrical impulses. Side effects she'd never suffered before.

She had thought about how to defeat a section staff. She just had to get close...

"I've always loved you." It took work to say it above the howling wind. Speech wasn't enough. She needed to shout. Needed to cry out to be heard, needed to cry out so it would be heard by everyone.

... She just had to slip inside her opponent's guard...

"And I'll love you forever." It took work to say it against a lifetime of silence. But in this moment, Solarel could only see the lifetime ahead of her.

Transform a duel into a grapple. Transform a fall into a dive. Transform silence into speech, and speech into a kiss. Come to me, my nemesis - and let me steal your victory one more time.