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[Twinwolf]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

As the bullet hell rained, a few times a shadow moved in front of one of the shots - a drone ducking past, most likely. Other times, a shot would seem to ripple; unstable energy or Maddie flashing past? After a good amount of time had passed - longer than would be strictly necessary to charge, as EtHun hardly wanted to let her enemy to get used to regular intervals they had to dodge in - three of the four drones opened fire at once, painting a target. Once more, the air cracked with two shots, one after the other, one a standard laser and one the high damage metal spike; this time they came from entirely different angles, one from the northern edge of the arena and one from about halfway down the radius of the South-Western edge

Maddie, who'd fired from the nearer, started moving again as soon as she fired without seeing if she'd hit; hopefully her opponent would assume she'd fired from further, but she couldn't be sure; her decoy moved as well, but just a bit too fast; two shots shimmered as something dodged past them fast, but which one Neon would go for, if either, was up in the air.

[IntSys]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

The disturbances seen around the arena could be pieced into a vague picture of how Neon's opponent and her drones may have moved when they were in a certain position. Though it was ultimately a guess, she was at least able to know from which sections of the arena there could be shots coming from.

When EtHun made her move, Neon was already well-prepared. She had intended to dodge all the shots, real or fake, after all. A quick sidestep, and the first three shots went right past her. Then, she met the last two shots with a simple flip, evading them just as cleanly.

It was at a glance a 50-50, but to Neon, her opponent was running on limited resources - four drones in particular - Every drone that fell to her attacks would further shift the battle in her favor, so either choice worked. What was important was that she did it quickly, and so she immediately focused fire on the closer source of fire, chasing its perceived movement with a denser curtain of bullets.

[Twinwolf]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

Unfortunately for EtHun, Neon had guessed correctly; the bullet hell stopped being so widespread, but her opponent had focused fire for a dense curtain of bullets around her position. Maddie was rather fast, but so was energy shots and the bullets were so dense she couldn't completely dodge them. As she ducked under a particular set, she knew she'd made a mistake, and was about to take a left arm hit; at this point inertia wouldn't let anything else happen. But she was a quick thinker. There was a loud THUMP of the small explosion of a plate of reactive armor detonating, eating the hit; but the flash was muffled by a dense smoke cloud that had appeared around Ethereal Hunter just as she took it. Maddie let the blast launch her backwards down the path she'd initially taken, getting out of the dense bullet rain. She'd taken a hit, but she'd managed to stop that from revealing her position. "Good hit!" Maddie called through the comms, forcing herself to take an easy and jovial tone, "If I wasn't ready for it you might have seen me!" She was already moving again, strafing the arena in the direction of the bullet curtain.

[IntSys]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

A pleasant surprise, but a welcome one. Though EtHun had shaken off the smoke she had laid down quickly enough to completely set Neon off her tracks, landing a hit at all would be enough to send a message that might just give her opponent a bit more stress. Just because she had the darkness on her side, didn't mean Neon couldn't land a hit on her.

"Maybe I have..." Neon casually suggested in return. A half-lie, but one that would eventually become true given enough time. Another round of bullet hell broke loose upon the arena shortly after, though she made sure to add some minor changes to it so that her opponent and her drones would have to adapt to the new rhythm as well.

Once again, she began to observe the disturbances around the arena. Building on previous observations, she was slowly able to discern more of what wasn't EtHun or her drones. Though she'd likely still need one more round after this to fully get that down, the reduction of errors would already allow her to dodge EtHun's attacks more easily.

[AzyWng]

Midas vs Sycophant

Midas simply stared as the hammer bounced, clearly missing the set of outlines.

He waited for a moment to try to see how the outlines reacted, then mentally slapped himself.

He was trying to do things the "smart" way again.

Just like stealth, that wasn't his specialty.

And just like stealth, that was boring as fuck.

Midas broke into a sprint, shield raised, charging straight at the red outlines, uncaring as to whether this left him open to attack, confetti cannons booming once more, airhorns joining them - and the arena once more became flooded with sound.

Aleks didn't increase the volume of the music, however. Celica's request.

[Twinwolf]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

Ethereal Hunter tried to be a bit more careful after the hit, staying on the edge of the arena and doing her level best not to need to dodge between the shots and Neon - she didn't need to go at top speed to dodge them at that distance, so she could mostly avoid the shimmering on herself. At least when she managed to disengage like this could keep stealthy, but it would start being difficult after she fired again and had to move fast to dodge. Still, at this point, it was one shot at a time; if she didn't land a hit she wouldn't win, and if Neon knew where she was when she fired she wouldn't hit; the situation might be slanted towards Neon at the moment, but each hit on her would change that balance heavily...

Neon had a really good vantage point in the air, and while she was spinning around to keep an eye on the arena and fire at the whole thing. It must have been hard to keep track of the occasional shimmer and all the drones at once, but she was managing as well as dodging the drone's blasts. Less MT, but seemed to be fairly heavily countering - nope, not going down that train of thought in the middle of a fight. If Maddie wanted a hit, her options were doing something wild or diverting her attention. She kept option 'last ditch stupidity' in her back pocket,  and went for option 'diversion'.

Maddie gave her bow time to reach full charge. Then gave it a few more seconds, as if giving herself the time to aim - and then one of the drone, about two thirds of the arena away, launched a fake railbow spike towards Neon while Maddie herself slowed down to just above where she could keep dodging the shots that were already in the air, and aimed. A second later, she swapped the decoy to another drone - usually a disadvantage in a well lit fight that tells the enemy where she isn't, but in this fight hard to tell otherwise - and fired that one at her. Then she waited for Neon to pick...

[IntSys]

Neon Aletheia vs. Ethereal Hunter

Once again, Neon dodged the drones' attacks, and the two railbow shots that arrived seemingly as usual. Paying no mind to it, she picked the closer source of fire and rained hell on it. While with the drones not being as swift as their user was, the drone she fired on would most certainly get pinned and disabled, the problem was that the real shot was none of the two shots.

Hook, line, and sinker. Another crushing shot, punching right through her stomach. To EtHun, that had to be a direct shot as well. And that would be two shots. Were it any other 6-Armor mech, that would've been it. Yet all that happened was Neon getting knocked away again, along with a seemingly reassuring flash of light.

Was her aim getting rusty? Was her railbow really not as strong as she thought? Or perhaps there was more to what Neon was doing?

"And that... was a good hit too," Neon commended, returning the favor. She returned to position, about to begin another barrage, as if nothing had happened.

[DragonRage]

Elspeth saw Tarmo glow, and then book it.  She threw the Ruby Darter into an evasive... only to see the flying slash sail well to the left of her former position.  She fired a few more general purpose bombs along Tarmo's trajectory when he was last visible, but he seemed smart and experienced enough to not run in a straight line.

"Well, this is great," She muttered to herself, "I can't see him unless he attacks, he clearly can't see me at all, so how are we supposed to hit each other?  I still could bomb the whole arena, but if that doesn't work I'll be low on bombs...  Might not have a choice if this stalemate keeps up.  Ooooor I could get creative.  It's not like there's a time limit, so that means I can try this!"

Elspeth pulled up her fuse timer control screen, and set her incendiary bomblet pods to timed detonation: 7 minutes.  Then, she flew a methodical course over the arena, slowly dropping the baseball-sized grenades to carpet the entire floor.  According to her calculations, this timer would let her cover the entire arena with a minute of 'grace time' for any unexpected occurrences.  If the explosions got Tarmo, great!  But if they don't, they would make enough light and fire to show her where he is.  Well, in theory.

[Chevaleresse]

How irritating. . . Perhaps not unexpectedly, his attack had completely whiffed, though her followup had a similar amount of luck. Without realizing it, he growled under his breath as he considered his options. His opponent seemed to want to stick to the air, which actually narrowed down where she could be. Quiet, muffled thumps started to come from every direction; she had to be setting something up. Hopefully, being so occupied would prevent an immediate response.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained. . ." His movement capacitors were recharged by now, which meant he had some breathing room should this backfire spectacularly. He planted his sword in the ground, still grasping it, then had his mech channel all extra power to charging up the blade. It created an impressive, intimidating-looking lightshow, the Wandering Dragon shining with a vibrant blue, electrical arcs snapping between the horns on the helmet. This lasted a few seconds, after which Tarmo (hopefully) leapt into the air with a spinning motion, unleashing a spiraling wave of electricity several feet off of the ground. The attack was barely worthy of the name, dispersed as it was, but hopefully it would reveal his enemy, or goad her into an ill-advised risk.

[DragonRage]

Elspeth noticed the glow, re-oriented the Ruby Darter towards Tarmo, and fired off a five second burst of fire from her forward-facing 20mm autocannons, before diving down to escape the obvious ranged attack.  It clipped the tip of one of her wings, sending sparks racing up it briefly, but there weren't any electronics in the wing itself for the electricity to bother, and it wasn't strong enough to reach the more vulnerable body.

"Right.  If I fly at a constant height, he can predict that," Elspeth realized.  She continued her bombing run, varying her height more so as to reduce the odds of such an attack working again.  She'd got a rough idea of where Tarmo is at this moment, so she could avoid flying too low over there.  Good thing she gave herself that extra time, or she might have had to dump some bombs early.

[Chevaleresse]

"There you are." The machine gun fire landed in the Dragon's armor as he finished his maneuver, scoring a few hits but no critical damage yet. The remainder of the burst was mitigated by a combination of angling himself to present his right side and simply not being where the bullets were landing as he began to advance. She would obviously be dodging now, but he'd gotten a sense of her position as well as an impression of her speed. This left a finite (but ever-expanding) sphere of potential positions; this narrowed to a cone unless she could suddenly stop and change directions.

Activating the capacitors once more, the Wandering Dragon streaked across the arena. He suddenly stopped at one edge of the cone, then just as swiftly executed a sweeping diagonal uppercut, aiming to cover the most area possible with the slash.

[DragonRage]

"There you are!"  As Tarmo moved, his capacitors' glow makes him more than visible enough for Elspeth's purposes.  "Hey glowstick!"  She called out over an open channel, "Would you like to explode?"  Elspeth cast Galvanize on Tarmo, making him strongly magnetic.  All across the arena, the bomblets she dropped earlier began rattling and moving with alarming speed toward the speeding Tarmo whenever he drew near them.

Then Tarmo jumped, and lashed out with his sword.  "Whoajeez you're fast!" Elspeth pulled a hard stop and reverse, causing Tarmo's sword to leave a shallow scratch in her canopy and take off the tip of one of her autocannon barrels instead of lopping her right wings off.  She flicked the Ruby Darter's tail forward, showering Tarmo with half her remaining supply of bomblets, and shut off the timers on the remaining 5 SBCs as she retreated backwards for the safety of darkness and distance.

Tarmo would presumably not be happy to see that those bomblets were attracted to and sticking to him.  Never mind the ones scattered around the arena that also seemed to be finding him attractive.

[Chevaleresse]

Tarmo swore when his strike barely made contact, and swore again when the Darter's bombs stuck to him. The cursing became shouting when the residual charge he had built up began to pop the things, causing flames to spill out onto his armor. It was a less than pleasant process, as well; while he didn't have the ability to convert incoming damage to pain, the Dragon wasn't built to isolate him all that much. The impending threat of the rest of the bombs slowly moving to him posed a hazard to his victory, and the flash of rage the borderline self-inflicted damage caused immediately blanked out the man's ability to think tactically.

There was one thing that the Ruby Darter likely had not anticipated, however. Elspeth was treated ghastly image of the Dragon rushing in the direction he'd seen her retreat in, wreathed in lightning and flame with his eyes quite literally glowing a bright blue as his Spark fueled his attack. The movement capacitors in the mech were still charging, but that didn't stop him from making wild slashes as he charged, rending the darkness with more arcs of electricity as the Broken Fang sought flesh once again.

[DragonRage]

"Well that's terrifying, but at least I can see him now,"  Elspeth considered her options, and considered them quickly, "He's not moving so fast now, and he's mad as heck, so does that mean he... can't go fast?  Then...  Bomb him now!"

Elspeth prepared four more 'cookies', the innocuously named 4000 pound high capacity blockbuster charges that serve as her most powerful ordinance, and set them to contact detonation.  She threw the Ruby Darter into full ahead, and hit the afterburners, lighting the dragonfly mech's rocket boosters blue-hot with a roar of magical fire.  She soared over Tarmo far faster than he was (hopefully) expecting her to be able to go, and sent her payload of 'cookies' plummeting toward Tarmo.  The bombs accelerated and curved in as they're caught by the magnetic curse, turning the 'dumb' projectiles into deadly, guided bombs.

[Chevaleresse]

The Darter charged, and the Dragon followed. Tarmo discharged his capacitors for all they had, streaking after the flying mech as it rocketed through the air. His Spark, channeled through his mech, gave him the edge in speed he needed to catch up to her, bringing him dangerously close to the blockbusters. He lead with his blade, the massive slab of metal tracing a perilous path through the darkness as it aimed to split what laid between the afterburners in half. His comms weren't on, but that didn't stop the incoherent shout from reaching through Tarmo's helmet as he threw himself at the Ruby Darter with everything he had.