As the Cocksquid, the abomination of alloy engineered in the heat of the moment by Bug, crawled closer, and Horst began turning back, still shaking in unnerving fashion, Mema-Ka had decided on a heroic, or at least pragmatic, sacrifice for the sake of team Apple. Raptor’s parts audibly groaned as misaligned parts forced into a new and faster configuration, dropping Logic Dover in the process.

“Mema?” Elora yelped in surprise, and then saw as Horst’s Multiform extended, only to see Arrish himself pop out of the hatch, carried aloft by jet boots on the suit and wielding his Maser. While she was confused at first, she now understood that Guinevere had taken control of the Frame, and was about to stab Raptor in the back.

“No…” Her eyes widened in shock. She needed to do something before it was too late. But what? She spotted the drone on Horst’s back, but the Frame had turned to face them before she had a chance to shoot it off. She remembered the technical details for the possession system including drone compatibility…by the use of remote communications.

In a flash of insight, Elora activated the Hyperwave Array system: even if it was partially broken and unreliable, it was still capable of sending signals. She pushed forward with the chassis jets, and turned the output systems to maximum: at that moment, the vicinity was filled with garbage frequency at various bandwidths, causing the drone, and the Dancer virus by proxy, to slow down to a crawl as it attempted to filter through all the commands and find the correct ones amidst a sea of electromagnetic refuse. 

As the drone slowed down, so did Horst, and it reared back with the held spear as if striking a pose, giving just enough time for Arrish to shoot at the drone with the Maser just as it was about to thrust: the shot made its mark, the beam having hit the drone right in the core, causing it to detonate. The forward movement of the Frame stopped mid-motion, causing the Horst to comedically fall forward like an action figure, the spear audibly creaking from the weight as it was stiffly held, the tip embedded into the concrete. Logic Diver’s Hyper Array also broke down, the antenna having crackled one last tiny flash before it smoked like a chimney. But Elora was content as she watched Arrish swoop back into the hatch, having done something useful with the system. 

Raptor advanced, shooting a Rocket Anchor that lodged itself into the Cocksquid’s twisted torso, and the jet-like Frame reeled in fast: it dove in with a flying kick, followed by flashes of light as the Attack Drones’ plasma reactors were set for self-destruct protocols.

Bug, knowing that Mema-Ka would proceed to escape, attempted to hack in two ways: the first was to lock down the exit hatch with remote hacking even as the pink piece of scrap metal was caved in by the mighty kick, and the second was to attempt to a forced Kattai of Cocksquid and Raptor. Big was successful, but only with the latter, as he had failed to realize that the doors only had electronic systems for closing and opening the exit hatch, and no electronic locks. However, he did succeed with the Kattai command, and nano machines began consuming both Framework's, just as Mema-Ka was able to wrench the manual release open and ascend out.

As the Kattai system began to fail, the emergency eject system activated as a safety measure, launching Bug out of the cockpit right before the two Frames violently combined, resembling a horrific heap of scrap metal and wiring; the Kattai system had failed to recombine Squid and Raptor due to Cockroach being stuck in the middle. The self-destruct mechanism activated, causing a huge explosion: while far enough not to be caught in the radius, the shockwave sent the two pilots to ascend.

High above the battlefield, between heaven and earth, the two pilots suddenly came face to face. Like in an old western duel, except one in a frontier town made of clouds, they reached for their Masers.

However, one of them was quicker on the draw.

[Bugatti disconnected]

Argent Wings, in a daring maneuver, vaulted to the top of the megabuilding, the concrete cracking under the Frame’s weight, yet still holding the Light Framewerk without collapsing.
Then, like an avenging angel, the Frame disabled all limiters, and twin red lights on the chassis, like the eyes of a demonic face, flashed open, followed by twin streams of Marker Light rounds that streaked downwards, not dissimilar to Aurora’s Gatling Gun fire.

Elora saw the attack coming, and fired back with the Automatic Battle Rifle.

“YAAH!” She screamed as the hyper-accelerated rounds ripped through her round Frame’s armor, but she still fired. Then, something began to happen [Humanity’s Potential]: the virtual reality simulation began to slow down for all participants, yet Logic Diver was frame-skipping past the slowdown, allowing her to get more shots in, a phenomenon unforeseen before. As a result, Elora managed to tear through the knee joint of one of Argent Wings’ legs [Speed reduced by 3, total 5]. But ultimately, the slowdown ended as a round pierced through the cockpit, and Elora’s heart.

[Elora disconnected]

“AAH…Aah….aah…”

Elora briefly screamed as her consciousness returned to reality before dissipating away with exhaustion, and she lifted the interface helmet. Alarmingly, small wisps of smoke were pouring out of it. The engineers running the VR turned frantic, muttering about how that was not supposed to happen, and Lorenzo took a sharp look at the diagnostics on his device, an eyebrow raised at the information collected.
“To think it spiked that high, and was able to even corrupt the program…Fascinating…”, he mumbled. 

Elora looked pale and sickly, sweating profusely. Though she wasn’t dry-heaving like Aurora, the experience had definitely taken a toll on her, as she doubled over on her seat, her head over her knees, her shallow and quickened breaths the only sign of life. “I…I failed…I failed…everyone…” She could be heard muttering, and tears tinkled down to the cold floor. Stella and Liisa returned with the supplies, the latter having gone over to tend to Elora while Ritsu walked over to the former, who had suddenly ended up in an altercation with Griff. "Enough," the lieutenant ordered the both of them, her arms crossed.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/Rk4nVkd.png[/img]