The Shield-armed Walker served to provide the vast majority of lifting strength, in part thanks to its massive size and in part due to its supreme sustained strength, both easily equal to Amalgam’s. Dygenguar, on the other hand, would serve to provide the impulse of force to propel G-Kaiser into flight, not unlike throwing a large spear.

“Full power to thrusters, prepare for assisted launch.”

Distributing power…

Charging capacitors…

Ready for launch.

“Throw!” Acala proclaimed, and his command was obeyed. Dygenguar’s cyclopean form strained under its own strength, the musculature which wound around its body compressing all at once like a gigantic spring. The livingmetal that made up its skeleton bent and buckled, but it didn’t break. As if the G-Kaiser were a huge paper plane, Dygenguar unleashed all the strength it could muster into a truly Herculean throw that shattered the sound-speed barrier in and of itself, the backlash pushing even the Shield-armed Walker’s bulk backward a few meters.

“Ignition!”

Ignition.

The thrusters on G-Kaiser’s legs and back began to belch forth pillars of lilac smoke. They issued forth an exhaust not like Amalgam’s precise jets but as though great liquid-fuel rockets, blanketing the battlefield beneath in a screen of choking smoke filled with microscopic void crystal particles. It obscured the view of the gates for the approaching rovers, but didn’t reach high enough to stop the defenders from firing down on them. Gripping the monolithic black blade and his gaze fixated on Amalgam’s battle with Asura, Acala found his peak velocity still lacking. At this rate, even though he could sustain his flight for long enough to reach them, they would trade at least one more lightning-fast exchange of blows. If the battle up until now was anything to go by, Amalgam might emerge severely-enough damaged as to remove it out of the greater battle entirely.

He needed to do something. Accelerating further was out of the question, it was already a miracle that he got G-Kaiser into sustained flight.

“Think, think…” he muttered as he mentally flipped through every available module. A message flashed before his mind’s eye.

Cognitive pressure threshold met.

Activating main armament…

He expected energy to begin flowing to the chest projector, but instead, it was being siphoned towards G-Kaiser’s right arm. No, through its right arm, and into the sword!

Indeed, as he pulled up an exterior camera, he saw that the Monolith Sword was beginning to shine an ominous red at the edges, as though it had been pulled from the forge. The air around it distorted, and indeed, even the writing on its surface shifted.

With hands of iron one may wield a flaming sword,

for to cleave evil asunder is rarely enough.

A toothy grin split Acala’s toad-like face from side to side as he gripped the control handles and allowed himself to slip entirely into controlling the G-Kaiser. The machine’s VI was merely reactive, and so the closest thing to a co-pilot he had was the Monolith Sword.

G-Kaiser Acala finally reached the mass of approaching rovers, whose enraged drivers had broken from a rigid formation to get around the duelling titans as well as the blockades produced by Fulgent’s long-range fire support. Gripping its sword with both hands it took a wide, rightward swing, using its tremendous momentum to propel it. To its pilot’s surprise and excitement, the ember-red mass cleaved through dozens upon dozens of rovers as though their armor was naught but butter, melting metal and polymer just as much as it cut and causing the occupants to explode in clouds in evaporate bodily fluids.

A message flashed in his mind’s eye. A combat synchronization request from Amalgam, whatever that meant. Without so much as a thought Acala approved it, and felt himself compelled to make a sharp right, as though Amalgam was telling him he would need an approach vector from that direction. More than happy to oblige, Acala raised his sword, stabbed it into the ground through an approaching rover, and used it as a lever to violently change his direction on a dime - an act which cost him quite a bit of speed and left some detritus on the Monolith Sword’s surface which took some time to melt away. In fact, he had slowed down enough for a few rovers to manage to target him. Of course, their turrets were painfully lacking in traverse speed, and had no way to efficiently aim at where G-Kaiser was in time. Their raging drivers tried to fire on the massive target anyway.

“Trust in the Skull Battalion, Ouroboros!” Acala exclaimed across walker-to-walker comms as he accelerated forward once more, cutting burning swathes into the rovers he passed over as he did so. Finally, there were no more rovers, and he was over open sand. He hadn’t been able to pay attention to the duel up until now, but he could finally see, and what he saw was both good and bad. It was a perfect opening, a perfect opportunity, but Amalgam was in dire straits. It had Asura in another one of its grapples, but as before, one of Asura’s arms remained free, and once more, it was reared back for a devastating punch to the three-armed walker’s head. There were cracks in the protective dome large enough to see even from this far away, it wouldn’t survive another strike.

Asura’s arm shot forward, faster than Acala could see.

Then, from Amalgam’s chest, a dragon-headed serpent burst forth.

----------------------------------------

Acala wouldn’t reach them in time. There would be another exchange of blows, and Asura would emerge victorious - this much, Armless knew. Still, he would set up the angle of attack for Acala. He would trust in the Skull Battalion.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Asura charged ahead once more, its leg-thrusters ripping apart the ground behind it as they had every time before. This time, however, Amalgam exploited one of the things it was superior in - with its tremendous leg thrusters, the three-armed walker blasted itself to the left, imparting a leftward spin and following through into a violent roundhouse into the right side of Asura’s back, just below its middle-right arm. The sheer force imparted pushed Asura as it had before, but this time, it was ready - bracing itself with a stomp of its left foot and staring Amalgam down with that ever-present, mad grin.

The razor-sharp, wedge-shaped bludgeon that was Amalgam’s calf slid off the hard plating on Asura’s torso and directly into the softer synthfiber at the root of its lower right arm, eliciting a grunt of pain from the mad walker just as it slammed down with its middle-right arm and grabbed Amalgam’s leg. Then, Asura froze. It wasn’t for long, but for a couple seconds, it was as though the six-armed walker returned to its subservient state, even the baleful glow faded from its face for the duration.

Though Armless wasn’t paying active attention to the feed from inside Asura’s cockpit, he still took note of how the Machinist’s puppeteered corpse was acting - or rather, that it was acting at all. It had hanged limp for the vast majority of their battle, but with this successful grapple on Asura’s part, the limp body turned its head to look… Directly into the camera. The motion was jittery and filled with struggle, as if the Machinist was struggling against the datacables that filled his body, and a couple of the ones closer to the surface even ripped through his skin as they stayed still even as their host moved. He raised a gauntleted hand - wrapped in cables - and with a single, twitching motion stabbed his thumb through the skin of his neck, prompting a geyser of black and blue to spurt forth. There gurgled a horrible noise from the hole, just barely legible as speech.

“Prh...Prhedictive algh...”

The Machinist’s body went limp once more as the datacables around and inside the meat-shell suddenly tightened, forcing it back into place. Asura twitched, and though it didn’t vocalize it, the machine roared into its cockpit as it resumed its assault. Armless heard "Do̷ ̘́n̺̕o̼̜t ̘̠ͅthin̥̭k͟ t̞o de͇͕f̭̳y̸̼̳ m̲e̫̦͘, ̗͙̮y̡̼̤̙ou ̷͕̖͇ș̡̥̖cal̙̳͚e͡b̖̜̳o̶un̲̯̻d͈̹ ̞fr̕e͈a͢k͝!̴"͝ rumble across the cockpit feed as more cables jabbed themselves into the Machinist. In the outside world, however, Asura seemingly just snapped out of its momentary immobility, and continued

Another moment of focus, another mental conversation with his machine crammed into the span of a couple milliseconds.

“Can you route all power output dedicated to weapons systems into me?”

Affirmative.

Alert: Repeated usage of the B.F.G. fire-mode is discouraged.

Lethal burnout may result.

“I won’t use it. Perform the routing operation.”

Affirmative.

Amalgam began funneling all of its available power output towards Armless, a reversal of the usual power output flow. Pressure began to build within Armless’s chest, much like it had during his battle with the Ecclesiarch, but this time it was controlled. He was confident that it wouldn’t rip him apart from the inside.

Willing his left arm’s subsystems to come online, its full designation flashed in his mind’s eye, soon followed by a demand from its programming. It had no VI, and thus no voice.

Type-VZG-2 Absolute Defense Array “Aegis Shesha”

Please assign an activation phrase.

As he had done before with the Distortion Cannon, he simply overrode the demand and forced the module to activate at the same moment when he commanded the cockpit to eject him. The dragonhead pauldron’s eyes ignited with lilac and its mouth snapped open, exposing the elongated black pyramid within, which lit up with illegible hieroglyphs. As the mechanism engaged and the hatch opened, he moved his left arm in front of himself, trusting in the shield projector to be powerful enough to shield him, with apeiron placed in the bend of the elbow and pointing forwards. The sun fell upon his face, instantaneously obstructed by the image of Asura’s fist coming down - and he was on a collision course with it.

The skull-faced man’s vision was entirely consumed by a lilac tint when the shield projector finally manifested its projection, which was not a dome or a simple solid wall, but rather the spectral image of a great dragon’s head, easily large enough to encapsulate his entire body. Apeiron’s grippers swiveled on their joints with seemingly no conscious input on his part, taking the place of the dragon’s upper pair of fangs.

Before Asura’s fist could make contact with Amalgam’s head, the dragon-headed serpent which Armless had become slammed into it, the projection shifting to perform a bite-down motion as Apeiron’s grippers buried themselves between the exposed synthfibers of Asura’s fingers. The dragon-head projection pulsed and suddered under the earth-shattering pressure of the mad walker’s punch, but somehow it not only held - it converted some of the kinetic energy into void energy, and fed it back into Armless’s system.

Asura howled in anger, screeching "How̨?!̧ ̡Şu͡ch a̷ ͜voi̶d ͝fi̡e͟ld ͜ge͠nera̵t͝or͡ ́do̕e̛s͡n͞'t e͏x͟ist ̢i͠ń ͘the͢ ͠arc͡hi̷v̷e̸s!̢" as the force of impact reveberated up its arm, the spectral dragonhead biting down on its fist and immobilizing it. The Machinist’s body twitched in the cockpit, and Asura seemingly regained some semblance of composure, as though it was drawing on the draconian’s mind to fill in the gaps where its own mind was broken. A beastly chuckle reverberated from Asura’s maw as it funneled energy to its leg thrusters, readying for a kick. The charge-up was slow however, as the thrusteres sputtered and died the first time - its damaged energy infrastructure was buckling under its own power output, burning out. Nevertheless, Asura pushed on.

"͘It do̡es̛n't̕ ̧ma̧tter.͘ N͝o̢ ma͟tt̸ȩr how stro̢ng, yo̕u'͏ve ͞no͡ ̀chan͜c͡e i̡n̸ hell̢ ̵at͝ ̕b̢r͡inging ͠them d̢own yo͟u͡r̴sel̴f.̀ I͏ ̢w̸ill̴ ͘bríng̕ the̷i͝r͜ s͠l͟av͜es̢ ͏in͏t̸o ̡m͡y͜ fo̢ld͠ ̶a̛nd çr͘us̀h͜ t̡heiŗ ̷emp͞i͟r̸e ̡o͘f dirt͞ ͝u̧n̸d̴er͞fo͠ot͏!̀"

“Apeiron, Blast Impact. High Power.”

“Fire-mode ready: Maximum Blast Impact. Shatter all who stand before.”

A great blast of unstable void energy burst forth from Apeiron’s muzzle, as though a dragon’s flame, enveloping Asura’s arm and pushing it back, ripping it apart, dislocating fingers, eviscerating synthfiber all the way up to the wrist.

“Remember these words, Asura. This arm of mine will rip open a hole in the world of tyranny the Igrons have built, and that hole will become a path for those that follow! The hopes of the fallen, and the dreams of those to come… They will become the fangs of a great serpent that will encircle this world and liberate it! That is the legacy of mankind, the so-called Spirit of Freedom!”

Activation phrase registered: “Spirit of Freedom.”

Asura howled in pain once more, its leg thrusters finally coming online from the influx of void energy. It reared a leg back for an upward kick, intending to free its functional left arm from the grapple. It spoke once more as its thrusters charged.

"̀Yóu'r̕e a͏lo͞n͘e̡,̢ n͞o ma͏t̕t̛er͏ ho̶w ma͝n͘y of ̵t̨he ͡sc͘ale-s͞k͝in͘s pre͟t̶e͝nd̵ ͡t̨o ͘be ́y̕ou͡r̢ friend͞s! ͞Th̷e͟y̸ w̸il͜l s̛hov̨e̴ ͘a nerve-̸s͡tap͞l͟er̀ i͡n ̨ỳou͢r ̸b̛a͘c̕k͏ at the ̷first̢ ͏o͠p͘p̧ortunit̡y,̧ ͘y̛o͡u͘ f̴ìl̀thy ̶x̷e͟n̨o̧ph̷ile!̸"͞

Asura kicked.

It didn’t connect.

A glowing monolith of a sword had come crashing down, severing both its left arm and leg in a single fell swoop.