~April 28th, 140 AH~

~Sector Capricorn, Vallemor Desert~

Dancer’s faded gold. Tripod’s burgundy. And Spindrift’s crimson, crossed with a twisting obsidian blade.

If Asena didn’t know better, she might’ve convinced herself that this was one of her paintings. The most violent, most frenetic, and most feral of her creations, but art nonetheless. And upon this final canvas, her desire to rebuild and create met its ultimate test against Makiri’s imperative to kill anything and everything that stood before him.

Unlike her other pieces, she’d accepted the help of a collaborator. Ghata Vakta took to his role with implicit understanding and battle-tested acumen, playing the ranged partner to Asena’s melee threat. The two worked in perfect harmony, without needing words nor status checks. All of their senses and Reserves were attuned to and focused on their shared target, as they fed off and added their own notes to the great symphony that was the [ALLIANCE].

Tripod, unbound by ER limits or cooldowns, harried Spindrift with an unbroken stream of [GATLING], [FUSILIER], and [MISSILE LAUNCHER], ever pushing him toward and into [NAGINATA] range. Dancer, with her overdrive gauge now stuck at 100%, made good on her threat, hunting Spindrift with a constant flurry of masterful moves.

But Spindrift, or at least this iteration of him, was the most complete predator the world had seen.

He refused to be hunted, using his immaculately refined knowledge of [THE INEVITABLE] to nullify and preempt the collaborative efforts of two warriors. Inch-perfect manipulation of thrusters to fly ever ahead of Tripod’s leading shots. Precision counters with [WINCHESTER] to blunt [NAGINATA]’s edge. And when an opportunity did present itself for Spindrift to break out of the trap, he did so without hesitation and before the two [ALLIES] could see what he saw.

Out of [NAGINATA] range but still well within [URUMI]’s, Spindrift turned hunter. The obsidian mass that was his right arm shot forth as a waveform killing edge, aimed directly at the centre of Dancer’s faded-gold frame.

Asena and her [REVENANT] warrior saw this and reacted accordingly, ducking under [URUMI] and using the ensuing opening to reclose the gap—and realizing too late that the attack had been a feint. For [URUMI] changed its trajectory mid-propulsion, bending sharply and swinging toward a circling Tripod.

The end of [URUMI]’s blade connected with Tripod’s right shoulder joint and erased the localized Armour therein with pinpoint force and pressure. The whole of the right arm tore clean off and spun uselessly into the sky, taking with it two of Tripod’s armaments.

Spindrift was inevitable. But that didn’t mean he was invincible. Asena forced herself to ignore Ghata’s plight, intent on finishing the counterattack she’d already started. Flying underneath the whip-blade’s shadow, she rounded to Spindrift’s exposed side, with [NAGINATA] poised for a skyward swing, aimed at the tumorous mass of ‘scar tissue’ that served as [URUMI]’s origin.

And in that instance where possibility still hung in the balance against inevitability, something or someone spoke from the Nexus to imbue Dancer’s intent with a novel instinct.

It went against Asena’s by-the-books discipline. It went against her [REVENANT] warrior’s singular aggression. No, it was a more wizened and cunning voice, one borne by a [REVENANT] scoundrel who’d outlived them both. And this voice warned Dancer of her overeagerness, and showed a different path to survival.

Asena checked her blade mid-swing and shifted her aim to Spindrift’s left side where, sure enough, LA [WINCHESTER] sat fluxing with black energy, poised to counter-counter. She finished her swing at a new trajectory, simultaneously arching her back to evade the [WINCHESTER] round that had already gone off. And as Dancer twisted out of the attack that would’ve surely ended her fight, her [NAGINATA] connected cleanly with Spindrift’s left arm, thereby severing it at the elbow joint.

Tripod’s two armaments to Spindrift’s one. It’d been an unfavourable trade, but it’d also allowed both [ALLIES] to stay in the fight.

Even as Dancer broke away from her enemy to regather her thoughts, she understood, though not with any degree of certainty, what had happened. Spindrift had read her counter like the inevitability it’d been, and had prepared his own response to finish her off. But in the last fraction of a second, a new idea that hadn’t entirely been her own had become a new possibility, introducing just enough chaos to offset [THE INEVITABLE].

Perhaps the trade had been in her favour, after all… for she now saw a clear path toward bringing an apex predator to heel.

“Tripod!” Dancer finally broke radio silence, as yet another idea emerged from the Nexus and took hold of her instincts. “On me! Stick to my left side like glue, and mirror my movements exactly.”

“What? That’s insane! You want us to give up our only advantage and become a single target?”

“Do it! This is how we win!”

Dancer was sympathetic to Tripod's skepticism, for she herself had experienced the same doubts—and had them promptly overridden by a [REVENANT] tactician’s cold calculation. And this tactician’s confident authority now transmitted itself across the Nexus, bringing yet another skeptical [ALLY] into the fold.

Now Dancer and Tripod moved as one unit—a single target—drawing Spindrift’s ire all the while. Even with seven intact limbs against three, the match-up was more or less equal in terms of armaments. Dancer-Tripod had a shield in LS [SCUTUM], an assault rifle in LA [FUSILIER], and a polearm in [NAGINATA]. Spindrift could answer with LS [AEGIS], RS [MISSILE LAUNCHER], and the ever-twisting RA [URUMI].

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Dancer resumed the fight, first by keeping her distance. For now, she was content for—no, counting on—Tripod to pepper Spindrift with sustained shots of [FUSILIER], while the latter leveraged the homing flights of [MISSILE LAUNCHER] to lure his prey into [URUMI] range. Occasionally, Dancer even obliged Spindrift, dipping into range only to quickthrust away before the blade-whip could reach her or her burgundy shadow.

Throughout, she did her utmost to keep her own stance neutral, betraying nothing of what she yet intended with her [NAGINATA]. Her aim was broadly two-fold: first to obfuscate the inevitable for as long as possible, and second… to frustrate an apex predator into an irreversible commitment.

All to engineer and manifest her own vision of an inevitable confrontation.

Eventually, finally, Spindrift took the bait. Seeing the limitations to his blade-whip attacks, he sought to end the cat-and-mouse game once and for all, by crushing his enemies with a hammer of judgment.

Once again, the Mothership came to her champion’s aid, gifting a chunk of herself to be used as [URUMI]’s hammerhead. And as Spindrift’s right arm gathered and grew in size, menace, and sheer power, Dancer watched with the glee of a vindicated schemer.

“You know what to do, don’t you?” she took to the radio for a final confirmation with her accomplice.

“I have to say, Shiranui,” Ghata replied, his wry humour audible. “I didn’t take you to be such a cold-hearted bitch. But I suppose… extraordinary times, and so on and so forth.”

Inside her cockpit, Asena—or one of her [REVENANT] selves—grinned with savage satisfaction.

Spindrift sped toward his prey, at the same time stretching [URUMI] behind him to the limits of its elastic potential. Then he uncoiled his obsidian hammer: too fast, too large, and too aligned with [THE INEVITABLE] to be dodged by a Dancer and her burgundy shadow.

So, instead of dodging, they blocked.

Tripod broke out of Dancer’s shadow for the first time since their union, even as he pointed a comically inadequate [SCUTUM] against [URUMI]-[MJOLNIR]’s might and enormity. Hammer connected against shield in an explosion of black-swallowing-blue. Now the whole left half of Tripod’s frame, despite being bolstered by [ALLIANCE], disintegrated in an instant, leaving only a fraction of an Eidolon to sink into the sky.

Asena felt rather than saw this happen. Then she borrowed once more a [REVENANT] scoundrel’s self-serving cruelty, the better to forestall any thoughts for Ghata’s vital status—and to steel herself to complete her mission.

It was time to finish this dance… by cutting off the music that fed her partner’s irrepressible death wish.

Dancer skirted the edges of the shockwave, then shot up and into Spindrift’s outstretched right ‘arm’. She grabbed hold of the writhing chain that was [URUMI], as tightly as she’d held onto any thread in her Kurator’s career.

Now, it mattered not if her intentions were finally laid bare. For the inevitable had come to pass, for both Dancer and her partner. Using the left side of her body to immobilize Spindrift, she then swung with her right arm, this time certain that her blade would find and sever [URUMI] at its scar-gnarled root.

But that was when Spindrift activated [AEGIS], enveloping both himself and his would-be vanquisher within a black spherical field of stasis and assimilation.

[NAGINATA] immediately lost its momentum, as its force and energy were sucked away by a Reiter’s memories of rejection. Long before Spindrift took on his currently mended form, [AEGIS] had been a near-permanent fixture among his loadouts, and it’d now arrived at its final iteration, imbued with the baser needs of a killer’s troubled mind. For even an apex predator knew what it was to be afraid—to want nothing more than to protect himself against those who would shatter the only reality he knew.

Sensing—knowing—all this, Asena persisted with her attack. She gripped the shaft of [NAGINATA], as tightly as she held to [URUMI], and she swung with all her might, fighting against the viscosity of [AEGIS]’s stasis-field as though she were wading through mud. And once again, she was visited by an idea, an instinct, an impetus that was more than her own. Another one of her [REVENANT] selves.

No. Not just one. A hundred, a thousand, a million of them. All of her [POSSIBLE] [REVENANTS] rushed into her consciousness at once, lending their voices to an absolute pandaemonium of memories and intents.

And within this Nexus-melting chaos, Asena found it. A thread. An unmistakable link that connected a Kurator to the latest of her broken Reiters, as surely as their Eidolons were presently locked in a deadly embrace.

And even though no script existed for this… even though no other Kurator across a million realities had ever encountered this exact scenario, Asena Shiranui knew what to do. She held all of her [POSSIBILITIES] within her chest and reached across the chasm.

[EVOCATION].

A military policeman in his black uniform kneels over a dancer’s lifeless body, even as red stains spread over the holes in her golden dress. A judge presides over the case of an unrepentant scoundrel, announcing his sentence with a heavy gavel and an even heavier heart. A general meets his tactician’s scorn with a grim shake of his head, knowing full well that this would be the last time they'd speak as allies…

… A warrior stands at the entrance to a solarium that doubles as his youngest sister’s ‘studio’, waiting for her hand to stop or her eyes to wander. He waits patiently despite his pressing duties, holding in his spindly hand a gift: an Old Earth treatise on ‘Expressionism’. He waits patiently, and when he sees with his knowledge of [THE INEVITABLE] that his sister is too absorbed in her painting to pay him any mind, he puts the book down on the nearest table and slips out of the solarium, as quietly as he’d arrived.

[AEGIS] dissolved.

[NAGINATA] came down at speed, connecting with and tearing through the tumours and scars that bound a warrior to his obsidian blade. Having now lost both of his arms, Spindrift appeared also to lose his will to fight, to hunt, to kill. His now entirely crimson frame sagged and sank in the air, before the thrusters too cut out, sending yet another metallic giant tumbling toward the barren earth, with no force other than gravity acting on it or the prisoner held within its central chassis.

Asena Shiranui used the last of her Somatic and Psychic Reserves to will her giant into action, diving and catching Spindrift’s limp frame in Dancer’s arms. Together, sister and brother made their way out of the thick of battle and onto the desert floor, which even now filled with the obsidian carcasses of freshly fallen Syntropy.

No one among the [ALLIANCE]—not even a Kurator who’d just taken the most intimate glimpse into a warrior’s memories—possessed the requisite intel to know what yet remained of Makiri Shiranui, hiding somewhere within his metallic prison. Even so, Asena no longer feared. She no longer worried.

Because she saw, and she understood. Across a million failed realities, across a million and myriad more of Makiri Shiranui’s remembered selves, not a one… not a single one of them had belonged to a killer wrapped within an aegis of unfeeling metal.