TOMOE KICKED the chronohorn's instep, crippling its single foreleg, and threw a punch that snapped its left neck back at a horrifically unnatural angle. The white-furred beast's remaining head whimpered quietly before slumping forward. No time wasted, Tachiyama stepped back and delivered the coup de grâce, and immediately turned to burning the small horde of blinkies rushing her position.

The limbless spherical beasts popped in and out of existence, "bouncing" toward her. A colorless pit opened in their bluish-gray bodies to emit sonics that disrupted a target's natural biological chemical reactions. Victims silently crumpled to the ground and the monsters would fall on them, engulfing and absorbing the bodies in minutes. Though they couldn't harm her mecha, they were drawn to the heat by which they tracked prey nonetheless. The Demigod's tactical software tracked their trajectory with deadly efficiency and her light lasers eliminated them as they blinked in on their predicted courses.

As Tomoe had anticipated, her presence on the battlefield had attracted an unhealthy amount of unwanted attention. There were more than enough mutants and monsters within striking distance to keep her busy all night, but the target she was most concerned with was the anomaly approaching from the west. The monsters were no match for an augmented samurai like herself. Even when she wasn't piloting the Demigod mecha as she was now, her enhanced body would allow her to battle for hours on-end, a simple blade in-hand. Numbers and time were the monsters' only advantages. They had used them well in the past, and no doubt would so in the future... but not tonight. Tonight Tomoe was the battlefield's apex.

She turned her active scan toward the target's approach vector and cursed as a blanket of Castle Defense Tactical Signatures ruthlessly splattered across the screen instead. Flashing clumps of "DECEASED" tags dotted the landscape in a procession that headed straight for the castle. A secondary scan confirmed the dead of each and every one.

Gods damn it, she had told them to retreat! What the hell had they been thinking?

She admonished herself and offered a quick prayer to the Amida Buddha to keep them in the goddess' bosom. The mistake of assuming they would retreat to the safety of the castle as per her orders when she took the battlefield to cover them was hers. They had obviously seen the target and bravely engaged, throwing away their lives in the process. A worthless display of bravado. She should have been more explicit in her orders. She grimaced in regret.

Her mech's tactical bleeped as it picked up the target, zooming in on it several hundred meters to the southeast as it approached the hovercarts.

Guilt-ridden and half in hope that the whole unit hadn't thrown itself into the grinder she contacted the castle. "Tachiyama to Control, sitrep on the return of Unit 17 to castle?"

"Commander, Unit 17 remains on the battlefield." The person-in-charge replied with the common phrasing denoting their demise; his voice bland and business-like. "TacSigs indicate–"

"Engaging target." She cut him off curtly as the apathetic tone of the man's voice began to gall her.

With a cool fire in her heart, she set off at a run toward the target, scanning it as the Demigod picked up speed. Her screen flashed back: "UNKNOWN". That was fine by her, too. She didn't need to know the threat's exact nature to obliterate it. The data she did pick up showed it was easily a third her size and humanoid in build; big for a human, but no match for 35 tons of raw power the Demigod would deliver in short order.

Currently engaged with a slathermander, her foe had its back to her approach, and it looked like the mutant lizard was about to have itself a midnight snack as it snapped its powerful, extendable jaws at the humanoid. In a surprise move, the humanoid caught the creature's muzzle and began to force it open with impressive strength.

She watched impassively as the figure forced the jaws further and further apart until they exploded in gore and a gurgling screech. She was unconcerned with which combatant would win as she would then eliminate the winner before returning to the castle. Already her commsys was squawking with requests for a sitrep from the castle.

She relayed the situation in quick coded phrases and slammed into the humanoid in a move meant to knock it flat after which she would unleash a deadly barrage upon its prone form. It would be a smoking ruin before it even knew what hit it.