[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Sagramore[/color][/h3][/center]

"Friction", in modern understandings of warfare, was a flexible term. Didactically, it was presented in the broadest of scopes to account for the myriad avenues it would inevitably approach an aspiring commander— that of any disparity that might exist between the idealized vision of a unit, formation, or organizational structure and its' real-world counterpart in performance. It was a concept that served a noble function, reminding the student of the differentiation that needed to be made between best-case scenarios, where everything was accurately accounted for, and plans went off without a hitch... And the messy, ugly, imprecise world in which they actually lived. It was a concept he had been waiting to bring up to Robin, before she had left for home— an ample illustration of the difference between ideal and real that he wanted her to understand before she walked herself into hell.[sup]1[/sup]

[i]Incoming, port side low. An old friend of ours. We're gonna hit the deck hard.[/i]

For instance, those obfuscating factors could have been as simple as Rudolf's vague sense at the end of the briefing that some of the concerns he had raised had been buried beneath the clamor surrounding the new Loki conundrum, and that in some way he was still a little brushed off. Immaterial in most scopes, but potentially deleterious to his morale if it proved a real trend, and not just the artifice of the mind he'd trapped himself within all his life.

Or, they could be quite [i]immediately[/i] impactful.

[color=c0392b]"!!"[/color]

Sure enough, his partner's warnings rang true, and Rudolf just about managed to tuck and roll as a column of water slammed into their erstwhile foe from the side and he experienced the now-distressingly familiar sensation of weightlessness before the Kirins collectively slammed into a hard landing upon the open deck of not the flagship they'd aimed for, but a destroyer off to the side. Gritting his teeth, the young swordsman came up to a knee, one sword drawn—

And a scowl painted itself on his face, as barely any time to orient themselves had been afforded before a familiar purple thunderbolt planted himself onto the deck a few bounds away, flanked on all sides by his jetpacked, foreign facsimiles of the warrior culture that had raised him. The horror of their first reunion, and the many ways it had ripped his careful yet ultimately flimsy facade apart, had distracted him from giving real consideration to the betrayal itself. 

Twice overwritten, really, considering he had been seconds later cast overboard and into Siren's spell, a fate he wasn't keen on repeating here. But hearing his name leave the former scion of the Arkha family's mouth, Rudolf was forced to confront it anew. He had once met this man as... not quite a [i]friend[/i], but all the same, someone he'd trusted to fight for the realm's defense, every bit as hard as his own brother.

And now, here they were. At opposition, flanked on all sides by the turnscale's upjumped new lackeys, artificial mockeries of a proper dragoon, all regimented, uniform, faceless. The knight at their head, reveling in where he stood— against them. Against Edren. The very principles he'd sworn to protect out the window, that once-unquestionable loyalty twisted to the point that he'd tried to impale Rudolf straight from the jump, not even bearing it a second thought. At that point, the "deception of a false king" may as well have been pretense.

His eyes darted across the field. Ground troops were slowly penning them in where they stood, but the real issue would be those dozen or so loitering above. They had the mobility advantage, better coordination with Valon due to the specific training, and those gun-hatchets from before that could harass them at a range only Eliane and Miina could sustainably contest. Bad enough on their own, but with Valon in the mix, bad could get worse very, very quick.

That was their [i]ideal[/i] use case. 

Thing about friction was... it went both ways.

[color=c0392b][i]"Chisato. They'll drop!"[/i][/color] he growled in undertone, betting her hearing was every bit as keen as her cousin's even when buffeted by wind and noise. He'd seen how quickly she could carve through a crowd last night, provided they were unsuspecting— a situation they were unlikely to find in these guys without a little specific counterplay.

Counterplay he could provide.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the telltale blur of Eliane's rifle being brought to bear, and his hands shot to the pouch that held his materia, flooding it with blackened will[sup]2[/sup] as he focused on the flying Valheimr. They'd never had the opportunity to [i]see[/i] this gambit in action, for all he'd been using it— a silver lining to how he'd immediately fallen into the drink last time. An ace up his sleeve, attacking their specialized unit's center of gravity[sup]3[/sup] with unexpected directness. 

[b][i]KRAK[/i][/b]

A half-beat after the first shot of the battle rang out, Eliane's patience clearly spent, the false dragoons' engines would at once find themselves under a redoubled strain that they surely hadn't been designed for. The telltale snap of violet magic, almost like lightning, rang out from the orb Rudolf had produced and jammed into the deck, rendering the carefully calibrated machinery and soldiers alike as suddenly clad in lead— spread out as it was between a dozen men, Rudolf doubted he could ground them all in one go.

But if he could attack their mobility in that crucial, opening second— their assassin on retainer could surely make good use of it all the same.

[hr][hr]
[list]
[*][sub]1. Note for the people that weren't inoculated in all this Edreni theory since they could breathe— the concept here may [i]rhyme[/i] with "Ideal War" and "Real War", enough that most of us would be forgiven for assuming it's downstream of that philosophical differentiation, but those are actually their own distinctions, at their own scale. I wonder if Himstus is aware of the academia that's been built up around his domain. I'm sure he's all about being the God of Policy By Other Means.[/sub]
[*][sub]2. No fancy metaphor or narrative sleight of hand to it this time, but I've an idea regarding this actually factoring into future usage. It'd take some study of how exactly aether is compressed to make materia in a functional structure, but as a specialist in [i]de[/i]constructing things... let's just say there's more energy you could [i]potentially[/i] catalyze than you really get out of [i]anything[/i] on the planet. If it's true of firewood, it may yet be true for [i]other[/i] resources.[/sub]
[*][sub]3. If you've been following the theme of these past twelve hours, you'll appreciate this one.[/sub]
[/list]