Narrative: Titanomachia is out of practice. The nature of rust is that a gradual easing back in is preferable to a high-speed impact with someone operating at peak performance. The underlying skills have atrophied.
Narrative: Titanomachia has been observing Madeleine's physiological movements and capabilities for an extended period; she has fixated on this opponent above all others. There is nothing here that can come as a surprise.
Narrative: Titanomachia is just as fucking feral as Madeleine.

Synthesis: Violence

She sees it coming - the acceleration over the soft, wet grass of the community Aristeia! oval. She is not wearing her armoured lab coat, not wearing her ribbons, not wearing the badges of beauty and championship that made her such an icon in the hex. Her fabrics are light, tight, sweat-stained, yinlike against the oncoming wall of shadow.

She performs three calculations - target, intensity, options - and gets two of them correct.

You hit the center hex before she does. She's [i]slow [/i]- you can get ahead into a blocking position. Another second at full speed before you have to break - but just as you commit to that extra moment of speed, Titanomachia is [i]speeding up[/i]. Suddenly all the trajectories are wrong, suddenly she's performing that supernatural dodge that took her past Musashi, Maxima and Sammy, you can see the glint of a smile as her face travels out of your field of vision -

- but it's not a dodge - it's a passing tackle. A perfectly calculated impact at forty five degrees, intended to intercept the moment where you start to brake. It means that your leg extended to slow you on the edge of the hex misses the grass entirely and so there's nothing to stop you from falling forwards at maximum speed, leaving her with uncontested control of the hex -

- but maybe she's right that her leg is slowing her down. Maybe it's a coincidence and you're just faster than she calculated. Maybe she didn't take into account the possibility that you'd fight back, or fight back this hard, because your arms have grabbed her metal leg as she lunges past, your teeth have found the soft, elastic synthmuscle bundles of her calf - and then you're tumbling over each other in a whirl of torn grass. All the world has condensed into a frenzy of muscle. You're on top, gripping her leg, but facing the wrong way. Machia is struggling free, hands clawing in the dirt as she reaches for the edge of the hex. The timer is counting down its last few seconds. Her eyes are still on the prize, a total bloodthirsty commitment to victory. Her greatest chance in this moment is your self-awareness: is that apology coming [i]now[/i], or after you stop her from winning?