After the initial flash of shooting pain ran up her left thigh and down her arm it dulled to a throbbing 2 or 3 on the scale one might occasionally be presented by a doctor. Such a system wasn’t designed by a sadist—at least, sadism wasn’t the point—but rather to give the pilot a quick overview of which systems could be relied upon to their full degree and which might benefit from a little care in use. When fully transformed the machine had a decently human range of movement. Many of its systems relied upon the materials science revolution which had happened a few years ago after the deployment of the first general purpose AI.

It would have been impossible a decade ago for a machine weighing about 300 tons to perform a vertical takeoff. Aside from actual materials science, Frames employed so-called Sympathetic materials. These were essentially magic and only took full effect in the presence of an active Pulse Drive. That thing was a slightly radioactive silvery ball about the size of an orange with a darker and duller band wrapped around its equator. Minus the decorative belt it reminded her a bit of the core of a nuclear weapon. It powered her Frame while it was earthbound and for a short time after. The jet engines powered it, otherwise, though she used them all the time in various tactical ways even while the PD was online. Basically, the Ghost was a hybrid. The concept was eventually abandoned by LockMart as overly complicated, and for good cause. Some engineers just had stars in their eyes after finding out what AI could do.

She flitted her eyes to her fuel gauge and palmed the side-by-side throttles up to about 50% before placing the machine into a running position. Within the safety of the citadel she barely heard the ear-splitting whine of the turbines spinning up, making the event seem as distant as if were happening on the other side of the airport. That was about as high as she could set the thrust before she started to slide along the ground from her position. Just then she got a notification of LOS communication incoming from her new opponent. Immediately beneath the central notification the sender had identified herself this time: Tatsuta. NoCro rolled her eyes and gave a little moan. So much for her location being a relative secret, and it being revealed by this person was the worst of all worlds.

“Go ahead.” she said, rubbing and slapping her cheeks, then painting a smile on them. Showtime.

A blonde Asian woman with soft blue eyes appeared in a window in the center of her vision. Her long hair was done in a couple of low twintails near her neck and tied off there with a couple of sunflower accessories. NoCro had an encyclopedic knowledge of the in-game cosmetics available in the store. The little sunflowers were cute, but they didn’t really fit her image. Tatsuta didn’t really fit her own image, though, a lot of the time.

“Hi, No-chon. You’re live!” Tats said, as if to remind her to behave, “Is my favorite seething little chuuni happy to see me?”

NoCro cleared her throat and laid a hand over her chest in an arrogant and self-assured way. As for her being a seething little chuuni, that was mostly true, and among those, NoCro was certainly her favorite. While Tats was still a minute away from landing and could attack from her position with her long range weapons, she had not chosen to do so.

“Of course I’m glad to see you.” NoCro said, “I can beat you.”

Tats laughed and rolled her powder blue eyes theatrically at that, given the differences in their strengths over land, both presently and in general. NoCro beating her here was an unthinkable event.

“It’s been fun, No-chon.” Tats said, “I wanted to see you in the main event, but when I heard you were here I had to come get you before someone else did. Now, gimme one good reason why I shouldn’t melt you down from on high.”

A normal player would not be asking this question, nor would he be hailing someone he fully planned to presently obliterate with an alpha strike. The only reason Tats was doing this is because she was running a livestream. NoCro closed her eyes smugly.

“As it happens, I have a sickness in my heart.” she sighed. Tats looked confused at how suddenly heavy things had gotten, since NoCro was normally one to play along.

“What’s that?” she said cautiously. NoCro took a deep breath.

“There’s a boy I like.” she said. Tats’ eyes went wide and she broke into a happy, involuntary squeal.

“Kyaaaa~! A confession! I know who you’re talking about. Shouldn’t you be saying this to him?”

Unbeknown to Tats, NoCro had already (sort of…) done that and gotten rejected. No matter.

“He’s always on my mind.” she continued, “I want to strike back at those who have wronged him. I want him to think of me. I want to face him and lace our fingers together. Above all, I want him to see me for who I am. So Tats, I can’t lose to you here. I don’t have time for that.”

Tats gave an nigh imperceptible twitch, which was unfortunately reflected in her avatar. Of all the possible reasons No-chan could have advanced, love was maybe the only one that could get the viewers on her side. It was also so completely credible given her appearance on On Grid Today that even Tats was on the verge of accepting it wholesale. Glancing over at her chat more or less confirmed that No-chan’s touching wish had garnered her a lot of instant support. Assuming it wasn’t a bit, Tatsuta was also not a little jealous.

No-chan’s psyop had thusfar already embroiled Tats in thought long enough to preclude attacking on the way down. The time had now come to light her solid-rocket boosters and commence her final descent to the ground. She flipped her Frame until it was feet-first and her boosters ignited, slamming her with g-forces. When she recovered from that she centered herself and drifted her hand over to her instrument panel. On it was a covered little flip switch which would jettison the vertical launch missiles attached to her back. Most players would call it a backpack.

If she fought No-chan on even(ish) terms, she might still be able to hold onto the affection of her viewers and bring the issue to a satisfying conclusion. That naturally opened the possibility of No-chan winning the engagement in CQC, however slim. That was exactly what NoCro wanted. Killing her instantly would box Tats in as a certain kind of villain character that she didn’t really want to be in public. Tats whistled aloud, impressed by this frankly devilish feat of narrative framing. She chewed on her lower lip as she tried to think of some way to salvage the situation and get out of here without becoming a meme. Someone bigtime had also just dropped a boatload of new viewers on her, so now wasn’t the time to be establishing herself as a merciless bitch.

You’re supposed to do that, No-chan! You’re supposed to be my foil! Ahhhhh! Tats whined inwardly.

“Y-you had me going there for a second.” she said, “Don’t believe her, guys, she always does things like this. Besides, anyway, if you have the power of love, you don’t need a handicap, right? You should be able to overcome any obstacle. Let’s put the strength of your feelings to the test.”

A bit pathetic, but that was all she came up with. Tats had been talking up up her endurance run of the end of ACO for a while, so cutting things short here was not an option. While NoCro was no doubt processing some kind of decision tree regarding how she could beat Tats, Tats was meanwhile stewing over how to kill her without looking like a heel. Not too quickly… sparing her was too dangerous, perhaps. Actually anything other than completely decisive was too dangerous. It took every ounce of her ability as a live performer not to let these emotions play across her virtual face, which picked up on every little thing the Progressive did.

“You’re right; I have a lot to prove.” NoCro said, “Throw everything you have at me if you like! It’s not going to make a difference.”

NoCro muted the transmission from her end and shut down her virtual camera, but didn’t sever it entirely. Tats sucked in air through her teeth and scanned her eyes around the citadel to make sure absolutely everything was in order for whatever that woman was about to do.

On NoCro’s end of things, she was a lot more worried than the image she was giving. Having reassessed the situation from the perhaps more hopeful perspective of her alter ego No-chan, she had however discovered that she had more resources than she thought. She had overlooked them, earlier. Presently she was supporting four separate razor systems, which brought up her heart rate over 175. That was bad.

A pair of plastic gates were at the top of each of her throttles, representing engine power beyond 100%. The diamond regime. No etymological relation to her Diamond knife, surprisingly. She placed her palm on the pair of conjoined throttles representing her left and right engines and shoved them forwards towards these plastic gates until they met with it, and then with a grunt of extra effort she pushed them both through it. The engine noise, which was dull before, accelerated now to a whining pitch which was obnoxious even in her own citadel. A notification appeared center-screen briefly before sliding off to the side and occupying permanent a place to her left:

Diamond Regime Online

2:00

It started counting down seconds from there. Nearly horizontal with the ground, she began bolting across the terrain. She would be downright quadrupedal from this position if the fully swept back wings were not catching the air. The Ghost was pretty light and its artificial muscles were hardly weaker than other Frames, so it had some speed on its side. She charged up a nearby hill and leapt off the top of it, snapping the wings outward to maximum sweep in the process. They unfolded about twice as fast as normal, which was another effect of the maximum-power diamond regime. Not that Tats didn’t know all of these capabilities of her Frame, anyway. Seeing that NoCro could handle it might have spooked her a little.

Tats squinted as she watched the Ghost leap off the distant hill at a full sprint. Her own landing site had been predetermined by her Physics razor based on the remaining fuel of her SRBs. NoCro must have analyzed that with her own razor and planned to close the distance between them then, while Tats was still descending. That was a kind of battle that Tats hadn’t fought before, having to face off against a Ghost so rarely as she did. They were supposed to be universally weak, was her impression. In any case it seemed like such a midair collision involving still-active SRBs would result in the destruction of them both. A suicide attack?

“Physics—“ she said, haltingly. She was about to say something like ‘can NoCro tackle us while descending?’ That was the wrong question, so she pivoted: “Give me alternate landing sites valid for… 5 seconds!”

While the razor dutifully pulled up a map with a few places she could land, Tats’ mind was a mess. Obviously, she should choose the farthest point away. Choosing an alternate landing site was something NoCro wanted her to do, though. Her moves were being determined by her opponent. It was becoming circular, like trying to guess at a game of rock-paper-scissors. Five seconds were up, anyway. The only play was—

“Pick one randomly!” she whined, letting her emotions loose and stamping her foot on the diamond-plated floor of her machine in mental anguish. This No-chan seemed slightly different. She muttered to herself, almost forgetting she was live: “Maybe it is love…”

Her utterance was obscured in the live broadcast by a series of harsh clanging noises as her Frame pivoted radically into another position.

“Hoooohhhhhh.” Tats wailed as she was lurched around by the autopilot and the Physics razor into a new trajectory. This would put her on another part of the island, now with a hill between her and NoCro. She had alighted atop a creek bed, in a gap between the small trees. The SRBs were jettisoned early and sailed off into the heavens into arcs on either side of her Frame. Perfect—there was no way left for an intercept. She panted and smiled, almost as if she had dodged the proverbial bullet. NoCro didn’t appear over the ridge as her previous path might have dictated, but drifted in low to the ground from ahead of her. It was an arresting sight, and made the Ghost out to live up to its namesake.

The gigantic machine was standing on its engines in ground-effect, floating towards her slowly along the creek bed and sending up a wash of spray. Her system automatically picked it out and zoomed in, placing the sleek, angular Frame into a picture-in-picture window. In the visible spectrum it appeared as nothing more than a shadow among the dark hills. After a few false starts on the stealth coating, her system announced a lock on with a constant tone and a red box. As things had gotten rather serious, she switched to infrared and armed all of her missiles. Literally all of them, and at her behest all of the doors opened and the hinges snapped out. Right then, the ominous machine stopped drifting towards her. Nearly two kilometers distant, according to her HUD. Not really eager to close the distance, it seemed.

“Wait,” a voice broke forth in her citadel, No-chan’s voice, “I’ve been wondering. Why are you attacking me at all? We’re on the same side.”

Tats snorted. Being able to destroy this woman with a button press put her at ease.

“No we aren’t, remember, you betrayed us? Remember that? I wasn’t that long ago, are you going senile you hag?”

At this NoCro started to give a little chuckle, which slowly grew into a full grown evil laugh. Since this was good content, Tats didn’t cut her off nearly before she should have.

“WHAT is so funny?” Tats demanded eventually.

“You picked a random site didn’t you? That was good. I didn’t see that coming.” NoCro said.

“Humu, well—“

“Thanks for hearing me out. It really helped me! I just needed a little more time. Behind you, by the way.”

The hackles on the back of Tats’ neck went up, but before she could even react her system bombarded her with multiple too-late alarms. COLLISION WARNING was the gist of them. She only had time to rotate her camera view to behind her.

It was NoCro’s Stingray refueling drone. Her mind flashed back to seeing it on the tarmac as she approached from high altitude, then immediately discounting it as a noncombatant. That thing was full of jet fuel, however, and her VLS was in a fully opened and vulnerable state. Before she could move an inch it smashed into her VLS with a jet-fueled explosion. Her entire external camera network was enveloped in flame, rendering even the IR briefly useless. On instinct she flipped up the cover and toggled down the switch that jettisoned her backpack, only shortly thereafter to be rocked by an explosion from behind her, and then a further series of secondary explosions she could only hear. She took a deep breath and readied her Sympathetic lance.

“Alright No-chan, playtime is over.” she found herself saying, becoming exactly the evil character she was trying to avoid.

She winced visibly and charged forward. There was still almost no chance of NoCro beating her in close range, and her Frame was still essentially undamaged. As she emerged from the concealing flame, as she predicted, NoCro’s Ghost was still at medium range, charging forward in ground effect, then it pulled the throttle and alighted on the ground to prepare for a grapple.

It was a bit closer than she wanted, but not close enough for a knife. She prepared the lance, and at that very moment noticed that the charging Ghost had its right arm cocked back. Still at a full run, the Ghost threw its own personal defense drone, the ring-shaped Option, right at her. It broke into pieces against her chest with enough force to knock her back a foot and obscure her vision, which was enough time for NoCro to close inside of the arc of her lance. As if in slow motion, she saw the translucent blue flash of the blade of the Diamond Knife swipe upwards through her right shoulder. She immediately lost all sensation from there.

The Ghost kicked the discarded blade upwards and deftly caught it. Tats could only think of falling to her knees in disbelief, and in fact her Frame slammed its knees down onto the rocky creek bed with much the same pose.

“You have a Stratoknight vectoring in to pick you up, don’t you?” NoCro said, after a fashion, as she was admiring the Sympathetic Lance in the glint of the moonlight. “I’ll be having that.”

“How am I supposed to get out?” Tats said, setting her up.

“One way or another.” NoCro said, playing along and driving the spear into the sandy creek bed only a few feet in front of Tatsuta’s Frame. Tats gave a nod and transferred the rights to her incoming Stratoknight to NoCro. The victorious party took her hand off the spear, turned her back, and lumbered away, pausing only dramatically to say one more thing. “I’ll see you on Isabela. The main event.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, you little witch!”

NoCro instantly received a telegram from Tats: “What if I attacked you from behind as you dramatically walk away and lost again? It could be funny.” Evidently the girl had at least a little attraction to the heel role. NoCro was in no mood for any additional playlets from this professional attention seeker, and in her response she let Tats know that the role wouldn’t suit her.

Besides, the whole place was about to be overrun. As soon as she was around the bend from Tatsuta, anyway, she went back to limping. If that battle had gone on a second longer she probably would have gave out. That was what her system was telling her from its sadistic interface. She winced as she got another incoming LOS transmission. It was her friend Signa, to the south. He was helpfully lighting up his northern array occasionally to cover her.

“Crow.” Signa said, “You need to get out of there. You have, say, a hundred Stratoknights incoming. They’ve even started fighting each other on the approach vectors. You want no part of this.”

NoCro groaned as she limped her Ghost to the airport. There weren’t a hundred Stratoknights in the whole fucking world. That was game logic for you. These would be the people drawn in by Tats’ broadcast. It was a hell of a lot more than usual, and faster too.