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Static assaulted her ears before Akihiro's desperate words belted over the speakers.

"MISAKI! ENEMY MECHA BEHIND YOU! ENGAGE!!"

The sudden shrillness of sound and Aki's warning had left her feeling jarred into a momentary standstill. She grasped the situation quickly enough though and continued forward while curving around to her left. Mecha were notoriously difficult to turn on a dime and even the most skilled pilots could only muster a circular pivot towards a new direction.

After what felt like an eternity of shifting to about face, Misaki finally sighted the enemy mecha perched on top of the parking garage. It was too far away for her to have a good shot at it. She needed to move closer in order for her particle beams to hit.

She slammed her foot into the pedal and urged the Kuroma forward as fast as it could go. Centering her targeting reticle over the mecha, she scanned for any information that the computer could provide. It spouted out a laundry list of details with a series of little clicks and beeps as a diagram of the mecha overlaid onto her visor.

It was a Sycader. She recognized it from paperwork she had seen at the old mech production facility she used to work at. It was a new model from the competition, created by Sy Systems. The Sycader boasted a ridiculous amount of thrusters that allowed it to fly through the air for an extended amount of time all while armed with two long range plasma cannons. This made it an extremely dangerous foe for the Kuroma's medium to close range build.

Misaki knew she would have to play it aggressive in order to win this fight and continued dashing towards the Sycader until she was withing firing range. She desperately wanted to keep the fight as far away from the Peregrine dropship as she could to ensure it wouldn't wind up as collateral damage.

As she was closing the distance, the Sycader jumped from it's roosting point on top of the garage to a huge cement pillar just ahead of her. Misaki rotated the upper half of the Kuroma's torso towards her adversary and fired off all six lasers at once in the hopes of landing at least a single shot. Burning hot lasers cut into the left side of the Sycader's armor as two lasers hit spot on. She watched as the shining mecha crouched and lifted off again causing the pillar to crack below it's massive force.

The sun blinded Misaki as she tried to maintain visuals on the target without success. She set a course to turn again, just in time to miss the crumbled hunks of rock falling from the ruined column. It was fortunate that she had never stopped moving during the confrontation or she could have sustained serious damage. She still didn't have the Sycader in her sights though and desperately looked around to locate it.

At last, her sensors found the quick moving foe had touched down on top of an unused loading platform off to the side of the runway. Misaki had no choice but to follow him back to the upper level. She wasn't too far off course to adjust and swiftly took off for the ramp. Immense balls of bright blue electricity discharged through the sky leaving a smouldering crater behind her.

If she didn't keep moving, her Kuroma wouldn't last long against the deadly power of the Sycader's weapon load. She recalled how the Plasmacast in Prophet's Reach had completely ruined Fujimori's mecha right before her eyes with three plasma cannons at once. Instead of fear, she felt nothing but anger at everything the rotten Iron Badgers had done. A frothing rage built inside her chest not just for Midori no Mori and her squad, but for everyone's life they had ever ruined.

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I won't let them get away with it! The Kuroma crested the surface of the top level and found her mark out of cover. The pilot slammed on the brakes before jumping into the air and propelling itself to the side in a blur of fiery blue rocket fuel. Before it could get too far away, Misaki unloaded her full arsenal into the Sycader again. The shots fell short, but in an incredible stroke of luck one laser hit a thruster at the mecha's feet. Unbalanced, the Sycader twisted to its side before crashing into the concrete. She had shot the wings off this insect and was now closing in for the kill.

Misaki taunted him over the comms, hoping he was listening, "HOW'D YOU LIKE THAT YOU SHIFTY LITTLE FUCK!?" She was fully aware that she sounded unhinged, but didn't care in the slightest. Right now this Sycader stood for everything wrong that had ever happened and she was committed to its eradication. It was all that stood between her and getting off of this planet with Akihiro alive. Everything else could be decided later, but for now the person piloting that particular mecha needed to die.

The Sycader recovered just as she was approaching, but didn't get away without taking four more lasers in the back. Misaki would have used more, but needed to maintain a steady level of heat within the mecha. Running used a lot of power as it was and charging her lasers even more. She had to limit it or face the potential of not only her Kuroma burning up, but also her own body.

As the Sycader ran down the lot, Misaki was surprised when a smarmy, but strangely intelligent male voice called over the speakers. "When I'm done here, I'll make good use of that smart mouth."

I bet he's one of the guys in charge here. "Oh, let me guess," she replied sarcastically. "Gonna make me a slave?"

"An obedient one," the man confirmed as he ran up to the next loading platform and slid behind the dropship that was docked there.

"Baka! That just sounds like motivation to me!" she said in between laughs as she let loose three more orange beams into the dropship itself.

"ARE YOU CRAZY!?" the man cried sounding terrified.

"No," she said with a now stone cold tone. "I'm perfectly sane when I say you are already dead." As one laser recharged, she shot another single beam up through the center of the vertical spaceship. She saw the flare from the fuel tank and grinned wickedly knowing that he would have no choice but to run out from his shelter.

"One less pirate ship. One less place to hide for a worm like you," she mocked him with a threatening tone just as he shot out from behind the ship. She wasn't expecting him to have enough wherewithal to come out shooting though and had no way to dodge the balls of energy that were now plotting towards her.

Unable to lose the chance, she lined up quick and fired everything she had at the ready on his backside. Misaki saw all five orange blazes cut into his back like molten hot lava before her entire windshield was covered in lightning. The cockpit shuddered all around her, shaking heavily from the impact as her heat sensors soared into the red. She heard the sound of another explosion. It was probably the shuttle's tank catching fire, but she couldn't see a thing.

"ALERT, ALERT. NOW INITIATING AUTOMATIC SHUTDOWN IN 3, 2, 1," the computer's voice warned her as the lights turned off and the Kuroma shut down. It was hot as hell inside the cockpit, but not life threatening. She just hoped she had finished that Sycader off with her final shots though or else she was in for a world of pain.

Misaki squinted out the windshield, trying to see through the smoke and flames that covered the strip of concrete before her. The Sycader wasn't anywhere to be seen which was a good sign, but she wished she could actually get visual confirmation.

She could feel the heat dissipating from the cockpit and decided to use the emergency override. Misaki grasped the big red lever tightly and with all of her might hauled it up to bring the engine back online. The Kuroma came back to life as her instruments lit up and she could see that the heat was now at a much tolerable level. She would have to move much slower, but that was fine if it meant she could know it was over.

Misaki lumbered forward, her Kuroma shaking slightly for the damage it had sustained. After passing through the massive smoke cloud from the burning dropship, she saw the broken corpse of the Sycader at her feet. "Told you, shithead. Already dead," she said to herself out loud. There was no need to call out over the comms.

She turned and moved as quickly as she could back towards the ramp without building too much heat. Misaki hoped that Akihiro was doing alright and that they could finally get off of this planet. No more setbacks! I'm coming! As her systems dipped back into the green, she was finally able to go full speed back to him.