What a showoff. That’s definitely a part of why I love you though. Lucina smiled under her visor as her sonic blade sliced cleanly through a piloted mech.
The battlefield was stunned into silence as the offending mech collapsed in on itself, and a pool of blood began leaking from both halves of the cockpit, which had been located in the stomach of the humanoid form. Funny. They don’t even have long range artillery on these things.
“Our commander has opened up the path for our victory!” Lucina shouted, Judgment amplifying her voice across the desert. “Don’t hesitate, and charge!”
Raiden, Winter, Lilian, and Reya all drew their weapons. Reya’s second, as well as Raiden’s lieutenants finished putting their armor on. Lucina had truly thought that the enemy soldiers would lose all semblance of structure once their aerial unit was obliterated, but it appeared that their side would have no such luck.
Lucina’s propulsion stilettos rocketed the Metronian princess forward and she met another mech in combat. The pilot wasn’t taken by surprise this time, and got an arm up to block the blade.
Lucina expected her weapon to slice through the mass-produced hunk of metal cleanly, but it got caught halfway through instead. Her eyes went wide as she let go of her sword, dropping from the arm as a fist tore through the space she had just been occupying.
She landed awkwardly on the sand, the uneven and soft footing caused her to fall backwards. Clicking her tongue as she scrambled to avoid another blow, she activated her propulsion system, and dashed backwards out of the pilot’s range.
“Raiden, what the fuck! You’re supposed to be running your eyes over the Starlords damned arena!” Lucina roared into her helmet, and pulled out the handle to another Metro Z-80, the same model of blade she had just lost.
She tried to activate it, but the nanite-infused pieces of steel wouldn’t respond, and instead just sat idly in the chamber.
“Sorry, Lucina!” Raiden responded in his comms while doing his best to duck and weave under the mechs. “My squad just located the enemy jamming array. They’re engaging with foot soldiers to take it down!”
Lucina clicked her tongue as she was backed by the incoming offense, causing her to be caught in a tight ring of machines. “Pathetic!” Lucina looked upwards towards where the voice had come, and was blinded by the sun.
She hadn’t been the only one, apparently, as the mech to her immediate left was cut cleanly in half, due to a meteoric slash by Winter Strafe. The woman’s long, silver hair flowed freely from her open-back helmet as she twirled her blade around in her hands.
‘This is why you always prepare a backup. You really can’t trust anything the Metron Kingdom makes.’ Winter sent her message to Lucina in a private message. Publicly, she shouted, “The Strafe Clan stands strong with the Kingdom!”
Lucina smirked at the dig on her weapons. The Metron Kingdom was often the butt of many jokes when it came to their nationally developed technology, as they were in a constant third behind the technically superior Luong Empire, and Empire of the Sun.
“Jamming array has been decimated and the enemy eliminated. No casualties on our side, but Firla has been hit and is in critical condition. We’ll be returning to the base to get her medical care.”
“Roger!” Raiden called as he activated his photon blade. The high output of light seared right through the cockpit of the mech closest to him, and a scream accompanied the ensuing splatter of blood that obscured the glass.
Explosions boomed behind Lucina as her sister launched explosive round after explosive round into the crowd of enemies. “Ha ha ha! This is so exhilarating! I can see why you guys act like savages sometimes!”
Lucina sighed as Reya continued to fire round after round from the dunes above, and continued to blow up machine after machine. She briefly saw Lilian get caught by a glancing blow, and go tumbling into the sand.
“Lilian, status!?” Lucina propelled herself upwards, and set the blade that was stuck in the mech’s arm to explode, bringing the entire ligament with it.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
In a move that mirrored Winter’s earlier, Lucina pulled her spare handle out, and let the blade full form before crashing down from the heavens, cleaving the steel in two like butter.
“Insolent assholes!” Came a voice from one of the mechs farther back in the crowd. “Infantry! Eject and use your mobility to combat the enemy!”
They don’t even have an in-suit communications system? Lucina thought incredulously. Even more old-fashioned than I believed.
The mech in front of Lucina came to a stop. The cockpit shuddered, and steam started to pour out from the clear casing.
It never opened, however, and the man inside seemed to panic. One last present from Joshua, huh? A bloodthirst grin made its way onto Lucina’s face, and she ran towards the mech.
Without much fanfare, she sliced the cockpit horizontally, ending the poor bastard inside. The mech collapsed to the ground, and a pool of thick, viscous blood seeped into and stained the sand red.
Lucina continued her rampage into the pack of weapons, destroying and dismantling as many human lives as physically possible. Lucina’s groove was broken by static that echoed in her headset.
“You act so well outside of fights, that I forget what a bloodthirsty monster you are sometimes.” Raiden commented as she streaked by his kneeling form. He had begun to take a break after his seventh kill.
Weak. Lucina’s eyes narrowed as she ended her twentieth victim. She landed on the dune that Reya and her second in command were firing artillery from.
“Good work princess!” Solze saluted Lucina, and handed her an electrolyte restoring drink. Lucina’s visor lifted, allowing her face to feel a nice breeze. Despite the fact that the nanites could control her body temperature, the fact is, her body was still moving, and she was still burning calories like a madman.
Lucina handed the drink back to Solze, and her visor returned to its proper place. She turned back to the mass of metal behind her as another explosion rocked the desert. It was time to go all out for round two.
---
“What in the Starlord’s taint happened!?” Sovix screamed at his monitor from his throne. He was shaking so violently that the Primal King of Warriors, Peter Ramire, was sure he was about to suffer a seizure.
“Shut up you blasphemer!” Laina shouted to the Machine King. “What would the public think if they heard you speaking like that!?”
“Oh, fuck the public!” The shriveled old man spat out, slamming his fist on his armrest with each word. “That has to be cheating! My machines were perfect! PERFECT!”
Sovix heart a short sputter of laughter coming from his left, and his ire was stilled long enough for the Machine King to send a sharp glare over to King Metron.
“Aaaand contestant Lucina just shattered the previous record, racking up an impressive fifty unit kill streak! The Metronian Princess is on a real tear as she carves up the Primal Kingdom’s formation!”
King Claude let the sound feed from his personal video stream resound through the room of politicians. It continued, “The Metronian offense has had no problems butchering up the Primal Kingdom, and we can see how well the royal siblings present in this match are performing! Whatever training they did before the match, it has certainly paid off!”
A wide smile grew on the King’s face, and he looked down at his video feed with a warm look in his eyes. “I doubt any of you would know this feeling, all coming from noble lineages. However, there is a lot of satisfaction to be had when your children work in tandem, and put aside their differences in order to achieve something great.”
“Well,” Claude said, turning to face the glowering expressions of the Primals, “Maybe Peter knows. After all, he does seem to be the only decent parent out of the four of you.”
“I’ll have you know that my children can and will utterly obliterate that dark horse of yours! Do you think the World Council will let you go over this matter today? You clearly have someone tampering with the very fabric of Judgment’s system!”
“Certainly we won’t be able to hide it from our next war game opponent. They’ll come at us, and the match won’t be nearly as one sided as it has been today.” Claude said while rubbing his chin.
“The World Council will do nothing.” Cindera Metron sighed, and straightened up beside her husband. “After all, when I complained to them about the same thing, that’s the excuse they gave me.”
King Metron shook his head at his wife’s loose lips, and all eyes turned to the apathetic voice of Queen Metron, and she leaned back in her throne. “What do you mean, do nothing?” The fury was gone from Queen Laina’s voice, and instead it was filled with simple and pure curiosity.
“Judgment itself approves of him bending it to his whim.” Cindy said, drumming her fingers on her armrest.
“What does that mean?” Rodrigo Ramire asked, sitting up in his seat. “How could Judgment allow itself to be used by a single entity? There’s so much at stake if what you’re saying is the truth.”
“There’s a much bigger game at stake here.” Cindy replied, taking a sip of the contamination wine that had been offered to her. “A much bigger game, and one that we aren’t players of.”
She let the room drown in silence as her camera continued to track Joshua’s slow, but inevitable march towards the Primal Kingdom’s last bastion of hope.