"Decreased Altitude, NOW!!" 2nd Lueitant Erfu Shiri, vice-commander of the proud Rinie pilot squadron, roared across the comms board.

Her subordinate reacted just in time, a spear intended to piece his torso instead skewed through the Nemo's head, damaging but not lethal.

 Erfu allowed herself a tiny sigh before speaking up once more, "That's good deary, retreat back, I'll stop his next move myself - Tomo's ordered everyone else to hold the line, we can't have it collapsing now can we?"

"Right, ma'am, sorry..." The man replied, his voice clearly lined with frustration - Erfu could understand why, somehow an enemy unit had crossed the open battlefield, a task by itself she could only imagine someone like Scarlet managing - And immediately this intruder had precisely killed one of their number - It had been one of the Valliere's pilots but that didn't make it any less shameful to of lost a subordinate so easily.

 Still if they panicked and all started swarming this enemy, they'd be playing straight into his hands - The plan was working just fine, the Curadh had already been greatly damaged, Kolme's squad had lured the Casnel away - The enemy in front of her was a minor stumbling block.

She ran her thin hands along her control boards, as though playing the piano - Slowly her Neo discarded its superfluously equipment until Erfu was left with just a sword in either hand.

 Erfu was an oddity, an elf in space - Her albino skin, red eyes, beautiful silver-white hair and pointed ears made that clear for all to see. She didn't hate her family, but she had hated their traditions, she'd been rebelling against them all her life.

She had made her brothers teach her in secrets the family sword-school, against her father's wishes - She conversed with humans and other races as equals against her gran-mother's warnings - And eventually she had shook off their bonds entirely and taken to the stars, to see all that space had to offer, to not be bound to one planet, one country, one tiny forest nation.

 But Erfu knew she would one day return, to show them Tomo, get their blessing - Perhaps even settle down there - And to that end she would use her heritage, use the sword-style of her family and make use of the Magi blood running through her veins.

She couldn't tell what the enemy would do next, that was a skill reserved for those with outright precognition - But she could read the thoughts and feelings of a person's mind and that had its own battlefield benefits.

 Even separated by walls of steel and armour, as long as she concentrated she could feel the enemy pilot's surface-most thoughts, tell when he would strike, know when he'd go for an opening - As long as that was the case she knew she could out-wit this enemy.

"Bring it on asshole." Erfu grinned, her mech surging forward.

****

A sleek Calabar blade and three sword shaped arc-staffs clashed in an inferno of sparks as Moncha's Vijaik-Special surged against the dual wielding Neo-C.

 Moncha laughed, bellowed with delight as the two machines clashed and clashed again - Each trying to outwit the other. Moncha knew he was the better pilot, but the enemy's strange power was enough to bridge the skill gap - So clash on and on they did, circling one another, blades beginning to chip and buckle with each successive heavy hit - Each blow helped him gauge the enemy's strength, each dodge allowed him to be more confident on what sort of power they might have, until finally he came to a conclusion.

He wanted so desperately to respect this pilot, to fight them honourably, he knew deep down they deserved that respect - But Moncha hadn't become the pilot he was by fighting with sentiment - Even now below him was a warship firing a deadly cannon at his allies, he couldn't waste anymore time.

As the enemy came in for another swing, Moncha let his arms hang loose - The Neo had no time to back out even if it could tell his plan, instead it changed its posture and the blades came fourth.

 The Neo's two flaming swords hit like a scissor blade, one on either side, aimed to dismember the Vijaik Special's lanky, thin arms just above the elbows - As always Moncha dodged just enough, he lowered his mecha's altitude by a meer couple feet - The two arc staffs landed, but instead of his elbows they smashed into the Special's far more substantial shoulder blades.

Moncha didn't waste another moment, his arc staff & Calabar blade stabbing forward straight into the rounded bulkhead of the Neo.

 All four weapons hissed and burned - The staffs bore their way through his shoulders, while his blades cut gradually into the Neo's defences.

 It was a race against time, whether the Neo would chop his arms at the stem, or if he could reach their cockpit. Moncha had wondered if the Neo would abandon its blades and back away, it still could of course - But it didn't.

Perhaps it was too big a risk to lose its weapons, perhaps it had read his mind and knew what Moncha would do next if it did back away - Or perhaps the pilot had simply done what they hoped was best - Whatever the reason, the decision sealed their fate.

The Calabar rapier got through first - With a quick thrust of the Arc staff in his other hand, the Neo's pilot was seared into a burned and bloody pulp in an instant, exposed to the horrific heat of the giant plasma cutter.

The Neo's arms fell limp. The Vijaik Special's arms, still just barely functional.

****

Things were working surprisingly well for Scarlet and the fleet at large - They had successfully launched their surprise attack, damaging the Curadh and giving cover for her and Sabban to cross the battlefield and lure out the Casnel - They had lead it to a place perpendicular with the main battle of the four warships, an empty part of space just out of the warship's range - Within sixty seconds Hoki and Kolme had also launched and so began their dance with the Casnel.

The plan had them divide into groups of two, one attacker & one in support - As Scarlet slashed forward with an arc staff, the Casnel's gleaming white & silver surfaces rose its cannon to face her, a second later it was forced to back off and raise that strange, translucent green shield to block an incoming blast from Hoki's newly repaired long range rifle.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

 "Scarlet you're out."

"Roger Kolme." She replied back, flipping a switch to fire one of her two shoulder mounted rocket launchers - Again the Casnel blocked with the cuboid shield covering it on all sides, in that time Scarlet pulled back her machine, while Sabban drifted into frame to take her place - Meanwhile a heavy blast of energy fire from Kolme's back mounted barrel-cannon passed over head - It was almost like wrestlers tagging out of a match.

 They had repeated this little manoeuvre a dozen or more times now - The two who backed away had a chance to breath for a moment and let their weapons cool off, after a couple minutes they would trade places again and repeat.

It was far from a 'safe' strategy mind you. If the long range support (Kolme or Hoki) missed their shot, you ran the chance of hitting an ally, but hesitate too long and the Casnel might get the upper hand on the attacker (Sabban and Scarlet), whom should they mess up, would be facing a direct date with the Casnel's intimidating arm mounted cannon.

 Moreover this set-up was purely a defensive one, they were simply keeping the Casnel surrounded by attacks enough that it couldn't fire back - They couldn't win like this.

Victory could come in only 2 ways - One was they hold off the Casnel long enough for the Fluchtig to sink the Curadh - Should this happen the enemy pilot might be distressed enough to either fly into a rage, enviably leading to mistakes they could exploit, or if they were really lucky, he might even lose the will to fight.

 This however meant holding out against the Casnel until the warships finished their battle and its outcome was hard to predict. After meeting the Casnel's pilot back at the Aardig's day party, it had been easy to assume the young man's stubborn pride would lead him to taking the bait that lead to this current skirmish - The Curadh was a different story, they truly didn't know what other secrets in might hold, or anything much about its Captain and her potential escape tactics.

So in truth the Neo squad was aiming for the other path to victory - Luck.

 The Neo-C was a Vijaik, they would run out of power hours, if not whole days before the mighty Goibniu infused Casnel ever would - The output generation of even lower class Casnels was no doubt one of the things that made them so powerful - And this was no second class unit.

 However ultimately, god-like or not, the Casnel was still a machine - And while the four Neo's were taking turn, 'tagging' out with one another to let their weapons cool off and the like, the Casnel was under a constant siege.

 A machine isn't like a human, it can't just pump its veins full of adrenaline to push through, machines break - Hoki's rifle had broken way back at the Clover, Una's escape pod had malfunctioned just last week - These things happened, alot and especially under a constant barrage.

 They had to hope that something would go wrong, that its shield perhaps had a cooldown period after a certain number of uses, or a bolt to come loose and slow the arms movements - Or just a faulty wire to break the cannon - It didn't matter what, they just needed a single opening to push through.

And then it came.

 As she was sipping from her water bottle, she watched as Sabban charged in for a sword swing - The Casnel held back, clearly ready to block with its shield - No shield rose - The sword kept going and scrapped across the shiny white of the Casnel's left arm.

Scarlet physically leaned forward in her chair, her monitor fixed on the point of impact - The armour was of course fine, the enemy was made to be next to indestructible even without its shield - Yet, just where the sword had struck, was a thin blackened section, contrasted wonderfully with the white of the surrounding area - Sabban had landed their first blow.

 She grinned a very wolfish grin.

"Kolme I'm going back in, Wingwoman on me!" She bellowed to Kolme and Hoki.

A quick order from Kolme in reply and Sabban backed off, with a sniper bolt from Hoki guiding her in, Scarlet started her assault - With an arc staff in either hand she batted, tore and cut into the Casnel - It could barely block the renewed ferocity of her assault - Its movements were slower then normal, 'He's panicked, the shield failed him and he's losing it!!' Scarlet cooed to herself as she moved with vigour around her cockpit, swaying side to side with each swing of her Vijaik's arms, clutching at various levers and switches to regulate her machines temperature and push it to move faster and strike harder.

One. Then two.

 Small, shallow black indents formed on the Casnel's armour as Scarlet broke past its pathetic evasion.

A whole new high hit Scarlet, one that needed no drug, she out-struck her left arm, arc staff first, this time aiming for a direct strike on the Casnel's torso, the first of many she would inflict to break through to the tiny person hiding inside.

"Huh?"

 The word tumbled from her mouth, she stared blankly at her red tinted monitor.

Her mechs left hand was gone, cut off at the wrist by a glowing green cube surrounding the whole of the Casnel - Sparks and hydraulics were all that hung in place of where the hand & staff had been prior.

 "Scar get outt'a there!!" Yelled a friendly voice.

She held her gaze on the severed hand for a full five seconds before snapping out of it and throwing her machine into a downward dive - Everything around her rocked as the Casnel's cannon fired, the massive, lethal, green energy blast striking where her cockpit had been a moment ago.

"Sabban back in now, Hoki you stay - Scarlet talk to me?!" Kolme issued without hesitation.

 With a curt reply from Sabban and Hoki over the radio, Scarlet saw them recapture the Casnel's attention, while her mech floated freely, its domed head and red eye staring down at the stump the lost left hand - As though the mech itself were in as much shock as she was.

"Scarlet? Scarlet talk to me!?"

"He duped me Kolme! That bastard played me like a fool!!" She bellowed back in response.

 The battle had only just begun.