Several days quietly passed since her last visit to Hem, in complete silence from the boy and doubts from Tsune. Maybe she should've have asked him about the present.

But then the weekend came and his invitation came first thing in the morning. She wasted no time.

But on her way out, she saw her father working in the hall. On a holographic design that was suspiciously familiar.

'Is that my friend's?'

'Yes.'

She was about to ask for his reasons, but then she remembered telling Hem to copy her father's work. It looked like her words could've landed him in trouble.

'He said that he made it by himself and avoided copying anyone.'

Her father leaned over the armrest, past the hologram, to look at her.

'That's exactly why I'm reverse engineering it. If I understand his design, I'll learn the way he thinks.'

'And I wouldn't worry about his skills either. So far he lacks experience, not talent.'

'You could've just asked me. And there are my decisions there too.'

'Thank you, daughter, but I know you well enough to separate.'

He touched several parts of the floating design and they turned red.

'For example, the motors and power units here are packed into separate modules, instead of using a centralized scheme like the rest.'

Shaking her head, she walked past him. She heard of fighters who studied their opponents from the way they fought. But this was the first time she heard a scientist, or an engineer, say that.

-

This time Hem opened the door even earlier. She greeted him with the news when she still was a fair distance away. Just to give him time to recover.

'Father saw your design.'

'Really?'

He hid his hands in his pockets and looked down at the crudely swept concrete walkway. Not the reaction she expected, but then again, he didn't know her father outside of his work.

'Yeah, he worked with it when I left. Said that what you lack is experience not talent.'

The praise delivered another impact to his system and, for a while, the boy just stood in the doorway. And Tsune had to point past him before he stepped aisde with a muttered apology.

-

Entering his room, as dusty as before, the girl saw several boxes on the table.

Hem sped up to reach them first. He took out a wrapped elongated oval, that was about as big as his hand, and offered it to her.

'Sorry for not inviting you earlier, I had to wait before the parts we worked on were delivered.'

Raising a eyebrow at that reason, she nevertheless took the wrapped item.

Unfolding it, the girl saw the warning signs on the metal surface. She read it, after brushing aside a piece of the thick material, and her grip involuntarily tightened. What she held was nothing less than a drone's main powerplant.

"It's lighter than I imagined."

She walked to the table and carefully rewrapped it.

'Aren't you rushing too much? This will have to wait here for weeks before we are done.'

She accidentally put more emphasis on *here* than she intended and decided to rephrase.

'I mean, you'll have to reorder if you change the schematics.'

Hem delayed his answer, as he moved the boxes and the wrapped case to the floor. But once both of them were at the table, with an open design program, he was out of excuses. And when he answered, he spoke of a different thing entirely.

'Please don't tell Den about this. I found a part time job at a local RC mercenary team to afford it. If I wait for the team's first paycheck then it might not be ready in time.'

'Oh. I promise.'

Even if she didn't show it, she was curious. He knew that Den would dislike that he joined a different team before their debut mission, yet this was even more important?

'Does Eider know?'

'No. But he would say that this was okay as long as I'm careful.'

And willing to end this conversation, Hem started to explain the first design in the queue. Leaving the girl surprised with at this sudden show of independence. It made her curiousity, about the target of his affection, rise even higher.

-

Their meetings continued until the first day of the tournament. And in the morning of that day, Tsune went to Hem to decide on what to do next. She initially thought that they would be done before today, but they still had a handful of schematics left.

Technically speaking, she wasn't against watching the daily recordings in the evening. So they had to decide only about today, as breaking her promise with Blade could lead to him making fun of her.

Once again at the table, now surrounded by delivered packages, she told him about leaving early. When she was met with silence, she continued.

'Sorry I didn't warn you about this before. I made a promise for today.'

After thinking for half a minute, Hem made his decision. He closed all of the prepared schematics except for one they could finish in the little time she had.

'You don't have to do that. I'll be free after this.'

'No, no, its fine. I'm a pilot too, so I wanted to watch the tournament as well. And when it ends, it'll be too close to the active year. I'll just do these myself.'

After they were done with the last task, Tsune stood up to leave. To her surprise, the boy didn't stop escorting her at the door. He followed her outside as well.

When he noticed her expression, he pulled out a ticket to today's tournament match. Nervolously rubbing the back of his head, he showed it to her.

'I also forgot to tell you something. Sorry.'

'And I wanted to attend this match too, if that's okay with you.'

She waved away his worries away and walked away, with the boy following her at a fair distance.

-

Half an hour later, the car entered an open air parking tower near the colossal arena building. It spent several minutes going up the spiral road, until it stopped near the top level.

Tsune got out of the vehicle, and instead of the elevator, she went to the floor's railing. She wanted to choose a less crowded entrance bridge.

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Looking at the nearest one below made her muscles stiffen, as its suspension cables seemed too flimsy with how many people it held. Taking several steps to the side, to see the lower walkways, she chose the one in the center.

Thinking about this as an example of the reverse psychology, she let the elevator carry her down. But that distraction was pushed away by unease when she made the first step. She felt the bridge's light movement when the wind rocked it from side to side.

Nevertheless, she went forward. With one hand of the railing, she did her best not to look at the mech depots far below.

-

As soon as she entered arena, she realized her mistake. Instead of choosing the less crowded pathway, she should've chosen the closest to her level. Now she had to make it through the crowded stairs.

After walking for a lot longer than she wanted, she finally reached her seat. Dropping into the plastic chair she stretched her sore muscles.

When Tsune calmed down, and allowed her seat to reshape itself to fit her body, she turned her attention to the giant round stadium. Steel pillars, that were even higher than the stadium itself, separated the audience from the arena grounds. And beyond their force field, was the match that was about to start.

Holographic banners appeared over the contestant entrances and to her surprise, one of them was blank. Looking at it through her phone, that detail was already surrounded by comments in the AR chat.

-Blank? Did their projector break again?-

-He's a martian, isn't he?-

-Eh? Why are they here?-

-They don't have their dynasty banners? Not surprised.-

-Who even cares about Mars.-

-He should've stayed there.-

With a sigh, she lowered the device. Reading that further would just made her feel bad.

-

The holographic veils fell and the audience all but drowned the sound of the robots taking their first step.

One was a bulky humanoid, with scarred and unpainted armor, and four hollow cylinders attached to the forearms and both sides of its torso. Another was already known to girl but it stood even with its twenty meter adversary, twice as tall as she remembered from the VR training.

Catching the moments when the waves of excitement were in their natural low, the announcer introduced the contestants.

-The lone wolf mercenary that fell in love with tournament battles.-

The bulky humanoid mech, with scarred and unpainted armor, stopped after leaving the starting zone. Then it raised its arms to align the hollow cylinders, that were fixed to the forearms, with the ones attached to both sides of its torso.

If it wanted to attack, that was a strange choice, as Tsune remembered the weapons. They simply didn't have the volume to focus enough plasma for a long range shot. For a second, she thought of returning to the AR chat, but decided against it.

-On the other side, we have a guest from Mars. Hailing from our city's academy, he seeks a challenge!-

Blade's mech raised his sword to greet the audience. But instead of attracting applause, he gave away the initiative.

The opponent aligned the forearms cylinders with the torso ones and then just pushed them together. When blue light escaped from the imperfect connection and turned the barrel metal red hot, the girl understood the plan. And she was proven right, when paired cannons released their clumps of superheated matter.

The thin blue lines instantaneously connected the adversaries, illuminating the mist around Blade's mech, and its armored chest detonated.

The twin explosion completely hid away the giant figure and the shockwave threw smoke at forcefields that protected the audience, drawing several gasps from nearby. Some people even put away their AR phones and looked around for their bags.

But Tsune smirked instead. And her smile grew when the Skeleton King appeared from the smoke cloud. With most of its reactive armor suit gone, letting everyone see the skeletal chassis, its appearance was fitting of that name.

-Netherworld Veil-

With a single movement of its sword, Blade's robot sent a wave of smoke interwined with mist. And before the black and white cloud could disperse, it adopted a familiar horizontal sword stance to rush straight at the enemy.

When the skeletal robot reached the edge of the cloud, the beam cannons glowed again. To Tsune's surprise, her friend chose to be smart over reckless and slowed down.

Seconds later, the mostly white cover burst from a silent twin flash. It was the accelerated plasma losing its cohesion and evaporating mid air.

It was a standoff between Blade, whose mist already painted the ground in frozen white, and the mercenary, who kept his ranged stance.

But there was a detail that betrayed the latter's bluff. The white hot metal that dripped from between the paired cannons. And if calling him out, the skeletal robot made a step out of his cloud.

Instead of firing, the mercenary separated the weapons, forcefully tearing the metal that already fused together. He brought the forearm cylinders up as makeshift tonfas, and the first sword strike left a dent on their heated metal.

It blocked the second strike as well and, with tonfas up, tried to bumrush his opponent. But the next slash was two handed and went lower than the arms could cover. The unpainted mech had to reverse and step back to escape a disabling gash through its thigh. After the first step, the pilot had to make another, and then another, until he was in full retreat.

-

The battle went on for long enough for Tsune to slip from excited viewer to a withdrawn observer role, as if she was watching a training video.

Despite the cooled cannons, the ranged mech was stuck in a precarious situation: Its fists couldn't contest the sword's reach but as long as it retreated, it could block it. As an unfortunate side effect, the constant movement of the torso swung the hardpoint cannons from side to side.

At first, the pilot timed the charges to fire exactly when they faced the enemy. But against the King's mostly hollow body, even the luckier shots took out a structural strut as they flew through.

He tried half turning the torso to aim with the other and parry with the other. But battered by two handed stabs, he lost as much damage as he gained.

Finally, the mercenary has had enough. Turning the mech to face his enemy, he blocked the blade with one forearm and grabbed it with another. And Tsune all but left her chair as she unconsiously moved forward to see the response she expected.

.

Before the unpainted hand could bend the blade, the sword's edges split and slid down to reveal a jagged chain. The sawblades crackled with lightning and the offending fingers fell away. Almost immediately after, the saw pushed the blocking arm into the shoulder before it bit in, with a geyser of sparks.

However, even at that price, the Blade's weapon was finally immobile. It was an easy target for other arm's cannon.

Watching the mercenary's mech stumble as it was consumed by ignited flamethrower fuel, the girl silently rubbed her forehead. It constrasted with the half excited, half agitated audience but she couldn't help it.

"In a powered saw? He just couldn't help himself, could he."

If it was the academy's tournament, the match would be over. But here, the blazing mech raised its hands again. If it got close enough to the heat absorbing mist, it could still win in a brawl.

-

-Skeleton King wins!-

The Skeleton King threw away the sword handle that was used a club and turned away. The opponent was immobile, with the pilot presumed as unconscious from overheating.

Blade's robot gave way to the rescue vehicles. As it walked away, its giant arm pointed in Tsune's direction, then gestured to one of the arena's entrances.

The girl momentarily froze, then looked around, disguised as fixing her hair. Given the stadium's current mood, she didn't want to be in the spotlight as the winner's friend.

When the announcer misunderstood that gesture as Martian gloating, she sighed in relief. But that's when she heard her phone make a notification sound. The girl looked at her device as if it was a snake. She half anticipated it to never stop due to a hail of messages, but it remained silent after the first one.

"Did he really call me too?"

After she saw that the call was from Hem, she picked it with some hesitation. She hoped it would be quick.

-Do you know him? He pointed straight at you.-

-Yes, but why do you want to know?-

-Oh, just curious. Okay, I'll see you at the team meeting.-

Tsune heard him cut the line and shrugged in confusion. If he wanted to give his reasons, he would tell. As for her, It was time to make a detour and listen to the smug martian brag about his first match.