Plans form in the span of instants, and you know what to do. Given the speed of that Hex, Takashi is the only one capable of taking it down decisively. Which he can't do while it's pressuring him like this.

Not to mention, if the Hex takes him out, none of the rest of you here are fast enough to get away from it. The battle will go completely out of control.

We need to move in closer. Bait the Hex away from Takashi.

Reading your message, Tendou frowns, uncertainty in his eyes, looking at the blazing fast frame of a make you can't even identify. “...Sure.”

You advance, drawing your plasma thrower. Once you get a better angle, at a closer distance than where the rest of the team is hanging back, landing shots on the fast-moving target is much more feasible.

That's good enough. We want to be close enough to draw attention, but not too close that it can rush us down.

You fire a few times. The weapon has a much slower rate of fire compared to your rifle, but each shot is a good deal more powerful. Unfortunately, every bolt of superheated plasma you fire is met with another flash from the shield on the frame's shoulder, the forces canceling out with no apparent harm to the Hex.

However, the extra distraction allows Mouse to get a few hits in. Looks like it has a delay before it can use the shield again. Recoiling from a shot hitting its shoulder, the Hex finally turns to look, sees you, and there's a small pause in its movement.

Another shot comes from Mouse, shield blocking it again, while you are already backpedaling, with Tendou saying, “Comms.” You immediately open them, for him to continue, “Gonna bait it,” and he kicks at the pedals, messing up the steady rhythm of your steps. You start to go down.

You catch yourself with one arm just before landing on your back, in a position that looks a lot more vulnerable than it is. Especially with Tendou staring, eyes fixed on the Hex, fingers hovering at the thruster controls.

Your allies all shout warnings over comms and begin running to get closer, but you don't play them for Tendou, not wanting to distract him.

Not that it ends up mattering.

“Hu-” Tendou gasps when the Hex frame takes the bait and practically teleports, the thing moves so impossibly fast. Pilot assist is already a step ahead of him, firing thrusters before he's even finished wrenching the controls to do so. In a single charge, the Hex closes the gap you thought left you plenty of space, and it's swinging its sword down at you.

Flying back and to the side to evade, it still catches you in the midsection. The plasma blade begins to shear through your shroud, melting away the thick layers of armor within moments. It only gets partway through before you make it out of range, the slab of metal marred and glowing orange.

If you'd actually been down, rather than faking it, that would be a killing blow. Even Tendou's reaction speed alone might not have been enough without Pilot Assist.

With your dash getting your back up on your feet, you jerk to the side, the Hex continuing to rush in. Jaw clenched and hands trembling, Tendou jerkily works the controls, responding to every move as the Hex presses you now.

You narrowly avoid a slash past your face, duck another, and take a graze near the shoulder, which wrecks the armor there anyway. Another thruster assisted leap back gets your some space, but the hex closes the gap again by the time you're landing.

Even though Tendou doesn't have the time or attention to speak, his expression says exactly what he's thinking: “How could it possibly be this fast?” Especially because it is a good head taller than you – a ten-meter model – and surely weighs far more than you do.

After mere seconds, Tendou falls back on just firing the thrusters in rapid succession, lurching side to side barely fast enough to avoid the worst of it. And that's with Pilot Assist acting on his commands before he's finished making them. He simply needs more to work with.

You do what you can to give him that., immediately beginning to funnel more power into your motors, pushing them up past their redline. You barely have a minute before they'll completely overheat and melt, but the Hex will do much worse, much faster.

The extra speed allows slivers of moments extra for your pilot to work with, staying ahead of the enemy's blade slightly more often.

Off behind it, you catch glimpses of Takashi. In the precious few seconds you've bought him, he reaches behind his back with his one good arm, retrieves a large shell, and shoves it into the cannon on his shoulder, before grabbing up the weapon still held in the arm he had cut off earlier.

By the time he's rushing back into the fray, the others have all closed in as well, and Tendou's panting breaths are frantic. He tries thrusting back to make space, but the enemy is faster.

He tries circling instead, but the larger, heavier frame uses its own thrusters to counteract the higher difficulty in changing direction. And the maneuver ends up putting you in your ally's line of fire, not that they could do much through its shield anyway.

He tries shooting it to make it back off, but just blocks with its shield, following up with a slash or a shot from its ion repeater, forcing you into another desperate dodge. You even end up dropping your gun to avoid having it cut in half.

When it seems like all your other options are exhausted, you dart forward instead, grabbing onto the Hex's wrist as it swings down from overhead. It's a deadlock... then it begins to overpower you.

It's larger, heavier, faster, and stronger? Apparently outclassing you in every aspect, the Hex slowly forces the glowing blue plasma blade down toward your shoulder, until you grab on with the other hand to hold it back.

It does the same, so you start firing your phaser into its wrists. It's damaged and not as effective as it should be, but apparently, the Hex has very light armor. That must be its big trade-off.

In response to the fire, it wrenches your other hand away, so you're again locked, hand to hand, in a pure struggle of brute force. Which you're still losing. With your right hand, you keep firing your phaser into its sword hand, barely keeping it from bringing it down, but you can't keep it from firing into your midsection in return.

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The splash of ion fire across your shroud sends electrical surges through your system, disrupting your internals and nearly causing you to falter, which would doom you in an instant. With a rapid series of commands, you isolate your shroud, where it's hitting you, from the rest of your electrical systems. That allows you to recover long enough for Tendou to white knuckle the controls, growling through his teeth, and fire your thrusters one more time.

You spin in place, rotating so that you both need to reposition your feet, which grants you a moment's reprieve before it can press the attack again. But far more importantly, it puts the Hex's back facing your allies.

Your foot comes up, kicking the Hex dead center, wrenching you free just long enough that you can fire your rocket launcher. Even at this range, it blocks with its shield, but the explosion is enough to delay it, so the hacking swing that comes down after barely misses your chest.

“Fire!” Tendou screams as you messily regain your footing, and you immediately broadcast the transmission to everyone in the clearing. Most of the team delays for that crucial instant. Even with the Hex between you, it's obviously not the best position for them to be shooting if they don't want to tear you up too.

Takashi doesn't. In the moments you lost sight of him in the brawl, he's already right behind the Hex again. With an audible click, his Mac cannon levels at the enemy's back and fires, hardly more than a dozen meters away.

Unbelievably, its reaction speed is fast enough. It pitches to the side, redirecting its shield all the way around in time to catch the incoming shell. The flare of plasma leads to an erupting explosion that washes over it, powerful enough to stagger you backward from the shockwave alone.

But the frame doesn't go down. In fact, the damage appears minimal. The only thing damaged is the shield projector itself, which sputters, sparks, and catches fire.

There's no time to celebrate either. Even as the whole team opens fire from behind, It's already rounding on you, charging with a heavy, haymaker of a slash flying in at a wide angle. It's an all-out attack leaving you without a good way to dodge. But your foe is just as wide open.

Tendou sees that opening. “Raaa!” With a bellowing shout, he slams on the controls, and you throw as much extra power into it as you can, motors screaming. You swing a full-power counter punch. The blow lands, crunching into the ravaged armor of the Hex's wrist, and shatters the metal structure beneath.

With a snap, the enemy's hand completely breaks off, blade and all arcing over your shoulder to clatter along the ground somewhere behind you. In the next move, you grab for it, both hands locking onto its forearm, while the others pound on it from behind. Some shots catch you too, but they're nothing compared to the damage you've already sustained.

The Hex isn't completely disarmed though. It shoves the ion repeater directly into your face and fires before your pilot can react. Everything sputters out, visuals breaking up as Tendou's eyes flash back and forth across the monitors. It only lasts a moment, but that's enough time for the Hex to bash your arms and get loose.

“Shit!” Tendou curses when it wrenches free. You next lunging grab catches its other hand and ion repeater, only for it to release the weapon and duck, just as Takashi is covering the last stretch of space with a thruster assisted leap.

Arms outstretched to tackle it at full force, his Lodzic barely grazes over the top of the suddenly crouched Hex, tumbling and sliding along the ground, as it dashes away at full speed, retreating from the field. Everyone unloads on its back as one, completely shredding its rear armor before it ducks around the side of the factory, breaking line of sight, and disappears.

There's a short pause when the battle appears to be finished, everyone staying on high alert for some time. When nothing else happens, they finally, slowly, begin to relax. During that time, you desperately divert power throughout your systems, pulling as much as you can from the massively overcharged motors to stave off a complete meltdown within the next five or so seconds.

Need to cool down.

You alert Tendou, who appears to be so dazed after the battle he has to reread the message twice, before he apparently realizes how hot he is too. You try to raise the shroud while he opens the cockpit, only partially succeeding. Thankfully, it's enough to let a gust of cool air in, which Tendou sighs and enjoys, before fishing around for a water bottle.

You double check the shroud, finding that the main balance and positioning motors are fine, but the ones which manage the pivoting of the shroud to better shield the cockpit are completely unresponsive. They must have been melted by that hit from its plasma sword, or fried by the ion repeater.

Looking over everything more closely to check on the damage, the results are better than you expected.

Even though that battle itself lasted a few minutes, and you only engaged that unknown Hex for a total of twelve seconds, it's a small miracle when you find that your shroud is the only thing that was completely destroyed. Excluding armor which you'll need to replace, of course.

So much of the damage was spread well enough that while many of your systems aren't functioning at full capacity, they're all still functioning.

Off to the side by your status indicator, you post up a report, leaving it there for Tendou to look over whenever he has a chance.

Torso Armor heavily damaged – repair necessary

Shroud destroyed – complete replacement needed

Left Arm Armor totaled – repair necessary

Right Arm Armor totaled – repair necessary

Right Arm Internals heavily damaged – repair necessary

Small Phaser damaged – repair necessary

Medium Rocket Launcher lightly damaged – repair not necessary

Rifle Ammo 900/1000 (-100)

Rocket Launcher Ammo 13/15 (-2)

Nian Dropped – recovery necessary

Makara Gained

Main Fuel Tank: 35%

Thruster Fuel: 26%

You follow the critical information with the ten different sections of hardpoint armor that were either heavily damaged or destroyed entirely. It's not as important, so you minimize it into a pop-out list he can dig through if he wishes, and return your attention to your ongoing effort to minimize overheat damage.

In particular, there are a couple heatsinks that... probably aren't supposed to be connected to your internal wiring, but are anyway. You find that if you redirect power through them repeatedly, you can bleed off excess power you have no good way of storing without overheating yourself. Wasteful, yes, but it's a tradeoff you're willing to make when the alternative is to let your circuits melt.

Once everyone has had a minute to recover from the battle, and you pick up the weapon you dropped, the group congregates in the middle of the clearing.

“That was... rough,” are Takashi's first words. “That Hex got me before I realized how fast it was.” He pats the shoulder where he lost an arm. “Good job holding out like that, Strider, you saved my skin there.”

“Thanks, but,” Tendou grimaces even as he chuckles, “it basically did the same thing to me,” and he taps your mangled, melted shroud. “Just got lucky it hit heavy armor.”

“You did,” Takashi confirms.

There's a short pause, before Tendou asks, “What kind of frame was that anyway?”

For whatever reason, everyone turns to look at Mouse, who soon answers, “Looks like it's a Lariat model. Ten-meter class, light attacker? Holy hell, it was produced in twenty-fifty seven! No wonder why the thing could move like that!”

Well, that explains why you couldn't identify it. And with eight years of technological development from when you were made, that also explains the gap in capabilities.

“All in all, great work, everyone,” Mouse comes back in. “It looks like we've accomplished our objective. Factory secured, no damage to the structure, and zero casualties.”

“Great work, yes,” Takashi agrees, “but let's not go patting ourselves on the back just yet.” As he speaks over comms, he walks a short distance away and picks something up off the ground. “We should be thorough. Let's check the factory.” He turns back toward the group, and you see what he picked up - it's the plasma sword, seemingly inert, until he holds it up, grips the handle, and it ignites with blue plasma once more.

Looking from the glowing blade to the group, he says, “Let's make sure there are no stragglers.”