The status quo favours you. The longer you move the higher your score. But Decima takes her time to appreciate the show.

You feel the serpent's gaze lock into place. You hear the soft crunch of leaves and earth under her feet as she walks on the edge of your vision. She can see you and you can't see her. She's not being stealthy, you can hear the clink and shift of her toying with her weapon, her scratching her feet against dirt and stones, her rustling her cape - all sounds faintly blending in beneath the pulse of the music.

"You're going to need to move like that if you want to fight Lios," whispered Decima into the communicator. "Have you heard? First she was training with Titanomachia, and now she's signed up with Taowu. People are saying that she's a favourite for the finals all of a sudden. She's definitely the only person who might move like the person you're imagining..."

The sensation of danger begins to grow. A little at first, but increasingly severe. The way she shifts and winds with the flow of your head and neck, the way those neon aquamarine eyes glint out at the edge of your consciousness, the flash of silver, the almost hypnotic refusal to be stealthy even as she refuses to be clearly seen. Hers is the aspect of a snake and something inside you rebels at this game: you need to stop playing and give her your full attention right now. She's doing something.

"... but it's the wrong stance to take if you're not fighting her. Have you ever fought a monster before?"

But she hasn't done anything yet. Not that you can tell.

"I hadn't heard yet, damn" Sammy says. Her ears perk up, and her dance grows just a bit tighter, arms up closer to her head, her movements shorter, smaller, and faster. "I thought Machia was only training that new girl, Madeleine. Didn't know she worked with Taowu either. Fucking scary thinking about those two working together."

The tension is palpable, and Sammy is leaning into it. "mrrrr" she says, thinking aloud as Decima asks about monsters, without skipping a beat in her dance. She twirls, her eyes passing over the whole space as she keeps her arms tight to chest, then steps out to hit a far spot before pulling back again. "Dunno what the fuck counts as a monster. Haven't fought Kraken before, kinda thought of it more like a field problem than a fight problem. What's your point, should we add random obstacles to the DDR board?" She grins, flexes, kicks like there's a tentacle coming out of her DDR pad that she needs to sever before she can step on it. Right roundhouse hook into stomp and then push back off again.

Decima is close now, in every sense. Close in distance, close in action, close in tune. But, here's a fun fact about cats. Did you know that cats have faster reflexes than snakes have striking speed? It's true! Cats have evolved in such a way that if a snake is coming at them and they react to the strike, they'll hit the snake first. There's a lot of factors at play, and Sammy's eyes are wide open, every muscle tensed, but she doesn't pick a direction. She steps and she dances and she imagines a field full of obstacles and thrown objects as she does, until the strike begins.

You make eye contact with Decima. Colder than blood.

She knows all about cats and snakes too.

Your Synskin locks up, all at once. Hits in multiple locations. No pain, just the flexing of neomusculature fiber strong enough to override your native strength. "Don't forget," she said, "I am your opponent today."

She crouches down next to you. "That's my trick for this round," she said, silver hair cascading to the left as she tilts her head. "I was not sure it would work. Now that you know I'll need to go for a full alternate loadout if you wind up on the other team. But knowing if it worked on someone with your instincts was important. Look -"

She pointed to a series of small silver needles embedded into your armour. They had not penetrated, they were lodged in the plating far from your synskin. She touches the tip of one with a finger and a crackle of lightning passed between the network, jumping between the different spikes. "Electroneedles. My own design, new. Subtle, invisible, quiet. No muzzle flash like you'd expect from this big sniper rifle - which as I showed you, is just a case and not where I'm spending my energy budget. What looked and sounded like me just walking and maneuvering my gun around was me firing eight shots. Individually the charge in these things is too weak to do damage, but with enough of them built up I can create a current that the synskin will register as a full body blow. My answer to heavily armoured opponents with low situational awareness, especially Lios, Bit, Astra and Argeltia."

"Knowing this, how does it change your approach?" she asked. "If you can be shot without any sort of sensory feedback, what is your counter?"

"ffffffuck!" says Sammy, and with an intense rippling muscle flex that shudders through her armor, she puts a hand around Decima's throat. Her synskin is locked up, but her armor enhancing her strength and running her muscles against every spot means that even through that she can manage a move particularly near the edges where the needles don't fully reach, giving her some range of motion with the wrists and ankles even though the majority of her body is locked up. It's not that meaningful, surely Decima wouldn't crouch down next to her defeated opponent. But she should remember that if she has to get this close this long to commit, it means that even a heavily disabled opponent might pull out a sidearm and get a shot on her in turn as their parting gift.

She relaxes then, waiting for her equipment to all reset. Her eyes are calm, no swagger, calmer than Decima would have seen up to this point. The contemplation of someone who just got punched and is done with stupid shows for the moment. "I think what surprised me isn't that I didn't notice getting hit, it's that I didn't notice you firing. No trigger pull, no muscle twitch in the corner of my eye, didn't see your fingers move or the gun shift at all. Guess there's no kickback, like no shit, tiny needles need like zero force to fire. Makes sense. But where's the choice to fire happening? If I see that next time, I won't get hit. If you're got some bullshit neuro link to that thing, then I'm just punching you first if we're not on the same team. If we are, well, depends I guess. Shadow me or whoever's fastest on the team. Dunno if this'll work on Argeltia though, she's fuckin huge. Even if you get like a million needles in there, you got the energy budget to electricity something that big?"

Decima had no reaction whatsoever to your act of heroic strength, did not flinch at all to the hand on her throat. Her reptillian eyes held a fatalistic fearlessness that was the exact opposite of your act of defiance. You know instinctively this goes all the way; if inevitable death came for her she would not die tired.

"None of that. Spend power budget on a neural uplink? No, it fires whenever I move the thing like this," she made a vague little wave with the gun. "There's a little metal maze that I shake the needle out of, it fires automatically when loaded. Might get the odd misfire but odds are nobody notices. Like I said, the gun is just a case, but it's a case that people project a lot of assumptions onto."

"Argeltia," said Decima, changing tack. "Never going to stop her. Point is to tilt her. She's used to everyone playing around her. Not used to pain, not used to being the target. I woouldn't be shooting her hands. I'd be shooting at her main body through the portals. If I land enough hits to lock her neck I think she'd panic and lose her cool. How do you plan to deal with her?"