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The blizzard became especially loud outside the house and Tsune involuntarily shivered. Then pulled her legs closer to hug them.

She was rewatching a documentary from one of her lessons. About a very old but still famous trio of pilots that fought together through thick and thin. They were long gone but the number of mechamonsters and villains they defeated remained unmatched to this day. The proper names existed in records, but everyone called them Sword, Hammer and Bow out of respect for their proficiency with those simple weapons.

This episode was a recreation of the battle with a chromed plated lion statue that dwarfed the robots. Its dark wings spanned at least fifty meters each and covered the battlefield in the shadow every time it made an attack pass.

Staying out of reach of melee users, it used massive wind attacks to try and bring down Bow. But the deadly pressure walls were either scattered by Hammer's shockwaves, made when it struck the ground, or sliced apart by the pressurized air flows from Sword swings.

Finally, with wings full of arrow holes, it collapsed to the ground.

'Good job, Bow. You've destroyed its wings!'

'Neither my arrows, or your sword will damage this silvery armor.'

'Leave it to me. My hammer knows no equal.'

Arrow kited the beast all over the plains, taunting it with accurate shots. After he grew assured that the beast's eyes were only on him, he lead it to the rendezvous point. At the same time, Hammer shifted his weapon into the running stance and picked up speed.

He was the heaviest of the three by far, therefore he needed a lot of time to reach his target. But on the other hand, there were very few things in this world that could take his leap attack and remain intact.

And as it turned out to be, the chrome armor was not one of them. The lion's body shattered from the immense hit, cracking and flying apart as sparkling confetti, while the its legs were completely buried in the ground.

-Rrrrrrrrroooooooooooo!-

The only remaining part, the floating lion's head, shook the land itself with a deafening roar. And stunning its enemies, it turned away to escape.

-Guh, I will not let you!'

The show ended with Sword running under the enemy to plunge his weapon into the neck hole. The air pressure spiked inside of the head and the fleeing monster fell into pieces, as the material gave away alongside the previously invisible cracks.

It was amusing to think that this was a serious documentary when she thought of it in the context of her own world. But defeating a mechamonster, that was that hard to destroy, was in line with many historical triumphs. If she were to guess, defeating that lion would counted as preventing one of the bigger earthquakes.

"So, let's see."

She looked down at the list of weapons to see if she wanted to add any of these three.

"Sword that created pressure waves?"

"Ultra heavy *matter reverberation* hammer?"

"A bow with thermal shearing arrows?"

'Ahh, none of these appeal to me.'

Tsune dropped the list on her lap and stretched as she thought whether to continue watching, or to stop for today. Her quest for inspiration, that would reawaken her creative spirit, lasted for quite a while already, but it always ended in the same way.

After several minutes of watching the blizzard, she decided that overcoming her *function over form* thinking would work better if she took smaller goal oriented steps.

"Let's think about it this way. What you actually need from multiple weapons is synergy, right?"

"My main weapon is a machine gun, so I'm a ranged fighter. And a ranged fighter needs something to keep others away."

"That weapon can't be too heavy, it needs to be one handed. Maybe bayonets would work."

The girl stretched again with a yawn caused by the bleak weather and stood up.

'All of this tv watching is making me hungry.'

-

'I think I can't just settle on a weapon without testing it first.'

Back before the tv, the blonde was looking through her classmate contact list. She looked for the name of a boy she shared a classroom table with. He was partnered with somebody else, but if it was about letting him test his melee weapons, he would happily oblige regardless of circumstances.

"Blade, blade weirdo, where are you. Here you are."

'What do you want, Red? I'm busy with the school project.'

'Don't be like that, Blade. I was thinking of testing my ideas for melee on your sword.'

'Ohhh? The firearms user wants to go close and personal? Even you are finally seeing the light, eh. What do you have?'

'Bayonets.'

'Hah, I should've expected a boring answer. I'll meet you in two days after teamwork practice.'

-

Two days later, the blonde wandered around the school with nothing to do. The lessons were over but she had several hours before the evening teamwork lesson. And even more before that ended. Plenty of time to visit the practice fields, that captivated her on her first day here.

But the door into the dome now had a guard post.

'Only students of third year and higher can pass through here. Real training is too dangerous.'

'I'll be careful.'

'Listen. You need to have a third or fourth year student card to pass. Don't make me call the administration.'

With a sigh, Tsune went back to the hall that housed the cabins. She put the bag below one of the windows and sat on it, holding the metal orb inside with one hand. Treating a rare custom device like a stool would give a heart attack to her theory teacher. But, well, their fault for getting cold feet when it came to connecting an *Intelligent Logic* to a training cabin. If she had to carry it around, she might as well use it.

To her disappointment, the ring shaped practice field was mostly empty. Nobody at combiner cranes, nobody on the tracks, only a single animal robot in the main field.

It was a cobra, about fifteen meters long, that performed different movement patterns. Almost all of them ended in attacking a thick wooden pillar, with various horizontal poles in seemingly random places. Some of the poles moved andsnake tried to hit them with either the teeth, or the whip strikes of its tail.

Stolen story; please report.

Mildly interested, the girl noticed that the window became foggy. Even a short trip made ran out of breath. She covered a sizable chunk of the glass in vapor and scribbled on it with her finger.

First she drew the movement types used by the cobra robot. They ranged from slithering, to the mecha shaping itself into a vertical disk with the head in the center. That moved by pushing the tail tip against the ground.

An hour later, or so, the cobra slithered into one of the many hangars in the wall around the field. And several other hangars opened to release a group of humanoid Majin robots.

They split into pairs and practiced melee combat. One would step forward with a punch and the other would either block it with their crossed forearms, or intercept it with a counter punch.

The practiced patterns would change after a while, but the monotonous repetion eventually lured the girl into a half awake, half dreaming state.

Until her future opponent startled her by shaking her shoulder.

The girl fell off her bag onto the cold floor, looking at the boy with acute disapproval. But his tall and thin figure was already on his way to the cabins.

-

-Training start.-

The screens turned on and to her surprise, the girl saw that her opponent's mech was not that far away. His size was about the same as Gunner, standing around ten meters tall.

He raised his long sword high above the trees and rocks. He even waved with it and called her over the voice communications.

'Look here, Red!'

Tsune took the joystick with her right arm and pulled it halfway back to start gaining distance. After the initial shake died down, she pushed both arm levers with her left. The giant hands raised and started to smoothly align the gun barrels with the center of the screen as soon as the lever triggers were pushed.

Blade gave her plenty of time to study him when he showed from behind the obstacles. As he turned and flexed his arms, she saw light shine through the gaps between robot's armor plates.

His robot was definitely humanoid, but the parts she was used to simply weren't there. It looked like a swordsman covered by a full plate mail suit made from thousands of small plates. Most of them laid unevenly over stylized bones and a grid like internal structure and hydraulic muscles.

Additionally, many orb like devices were spread throughout its body .Each released some kind of a glistening white vapor that blurred the light around the robot.

"He made an armored skeleton swordsman? But armored is too generous."

'Here I come!'

Her opponent either got tired of showing off, or thought that she had enough of a headstart, and dropped the posing act.

As the robot started to move, its gauntleted arm spun the sword into a reverse grip, adding the second hand to it soon after. Then the sword was raised to be held horizontally around the shoulder level. With this he could instantly stab, or aim at the Gunner's head, or left side of the body.

The mist around him left a wide trail that slowly condensed below, creating the impression that robot froze the ground. But while running in a straight line had the advantage of reaching her faster, it also presented the robot as a perfect target. And she wasted no time.

A barrage of shells left the machine guns and a twin stream of rounds connected the mechs. Most hit all over the opponent's hull. Some of them failed even that and streaked past the giant frame, ruining the simulated scenery behind it.

To Tsune's surprise, the robot quickly shed its protective layer. But the reactive armor turned all of her hits into a fireworks clouds that King quickly left behind. The ammo screen beeped, prompting her to reload.

But she reset the joystick position, halting Gunner and took the left arm lever.

Turning the lever's head dial about forty five degrees, she lowered the arm. Then she put pressure on a button below the left weapon triggers to manually contract one of the left arm muscles and make it swipe upwards and to the side.

That movement made the bayonet intercept the blade from below with enough force to bash it away. It would give her enough time for a clean pierce.

Instead of fighting with his weapon's inertia, Blade released the sword's handle right before it was hit. The sword's momentum made it spin in the air right above the mechs.

Tsune turned the dial back to make the right arm extend forward. The bayonet thrust at the opponent's skeletal side that all but mocked her with its lack of armor.

But a skeletal hand bashed the bayonet away, while the other grabbed the airborne sword by blade and stabbed down.

Threatened with fatal damage, Tsune rushed for the right arm lever. The other bayonet met the sword's edge and pushed it upwards, away from Gunner's head, .

With both sides in a temporary stalemate, her opponent took his time to talk some more.

'Good job, Red. But not good enough. Even with the length of these guns your bayonets don't have enough reach to stab. And they are too bottom heavy to convert weight into power for slashes.'

'By the way, the robot's name is Skeleton King.'

'Gunner.'

'Hahahaaa.'

Still laughing, the skeleton robot made several step back, beyond the reach of bayonets. And moved its sword into a proper horizontal reverse grip. Then the sword was thrust forward.

Gunner moved its left arm again, this time aiming to push the blade away instead of bashing it, but the weapons never clashed. The opponent's movement stopped almost as soon as it started, with the robot's right palm leaving the handle to stop right behind the pommel.

'By the way, Red. Melee can also be used like this!'

The palm hit the pommel with lightning speed. It sent the weapon flying out of the grip and into the Gunner's torso.

-Blade Sear. Enemy destroyed-

'Not bad for a beginner. Want a rematch?'

Taking a deep breath, Tsune took her time before answering.

'Yeah, but I'll need to make a proper weapon first.'

'I'll be looking forward to it!'

Picking her assistant device from the floor, the blonde left the cabin. She did her best to ignore the gloating looks from Blade, as they walked out of the academy.

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