The Proving Grounds [IC]

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

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"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Ippolyta's accipitrine talon of a finger jutted through space, as if to carve into the young Caerelian's breast from afar. First came and went a flash of trepidation, as what first registered was the tone of her voice, like a buzzsaw ripping through corrugated iron. Fast to replace it was incredulity, when Rosa parsed the semantics of Ippo's sentence... and cogitated it as a demand for alcohol. Before she could even part her lips for a response, a snort from her nearby partner indicated one already forthcoming. A snort, followed by peals of sardonic laughter.

"Pfffffff, hahahahahaha! What, Rosa!? Oh hermanita, your glass eyes must be fogging up! Dear Crēscerela here could tell you whether or not a certain wine's grapes were first kissed by the nether lips of virgins before being pulverized with a silver pestle engraved with poetry written three millennia ago, but hold her own against a knockoff Tianguo vase sloshing with what can only be described as concentrated stable cleaner? Well, I'm sure you can infer the end to that story. Now..."

Maiya turned to face Ippolyta front-forth, flaming tresses gently swaying in warm gusts rolling across the desolate warscape.

"I very well know my way around the inside of a cask. Shit, if you've a thirst I'd be happy to regale you with stories of how I trounced every single Blackpowder Corsair in a bumbo-chugging contest over a round or two-dozen. That said... my pockets are a little light right now, and I've the sense you could tipple your way through half a bank vault. Since Little Red Riding Bitch over there already seems heatin' for a fight, why don't we determine who picks up the tab..."

Maiya's arms swept outwards in wide crescents, billowing open her cloak and revealing the glinting receivers of several wheellock pistols holstered around her torso. Already cradled in her fingers were the lacquered cherrywood grips of two long-necked sharpshot guns, silver and red shining in the light of the warfare raging above.

"...the old-fashioned way, eh?"

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

"Just for the record, the name refers to the garment, not the person, so not only is your 'quip' crass, it is also totally-"

"Shhhh..." Ippolyta hushed the tight-eyed Yelena with a finger to her hidden lips, eyes still fused to her challenger. "Let me do the speaky business before your panties catch fire."

The finger vanished an instant afterward. As her focus returned to Maiya, her eyes flashed; the spectacle of her rising cheeks revealed, despite the mask, that she had produced a vast, sinister grin.

"Oh, that's just as well. Because a reliable source has informed me that there just happens to be a couple of horny ladies around here, begging to be fucked silly and maybe even knocked up too. Lucky for them, I just happen to have two BBCs on standby."

In tandem with her speech, Ippolyta's armoured claws reached behind her, clasping around the grips of two firearms on her back. She drew forth two weighty automatic shotguns, extended duct-taped sickle magazines locked into their receivers and toothed compensators screwed into the front.

"Thirty-three inches in length, one-inch girth at the tip, two hundred nuts per minute..."

In a motion of equal speed to Yelena drawing her two firearms, the Manreaper crossed her two shotguns, the guns connecting with a plastic crack. Her optics flared a luminous ruby once again, the vicious smile lurking beneath her mask magnifying in tandem.

"But I just hope you've got tissues handy – the boys have one hell of a temper, and they make a mess like you wouldn't believe."

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Maiya's vermilion irises began to flicker and flare with arcane light, twin infernos brewing with eager anticipation. Seldom had she the chance to face down a tongue so sharp as Ippolyta's, and she was going to relish taming it with fire.

She lowered her head until the brim of her hat concealed her blazing eyes. A nod towards Rosa prompted the Caerelian to draw her ateric falx, balancing its heft between her palms.

"Two perras just waiting to have the lights fucked from their eyes, you say?"

Maiya tilted her gaze upwards, flaming loci of power just visible beneath the umbra, flicking between Trotskaya and Ippolyta.

"So I see!"

With but a single step, the gunslinger threw the entirety of her being into a lunging blink so fast it cavitated the air in her wake, the sonic crack of its collapse ringing across the scape as she just as blindingly came to a halt... right beside the Manreaper. Guns pointed towards the earth, Maiya wasted not an instant in unleashing from its barrels an explosive firestorm, herself the epicenter of the roiling fireball that bloomed all around her.

Backflipping from the churning maelstrom of hell manifest with naught but a light dusting of soot, Ippolyta cackled as she spun forth her dual boomsticks, loosing a hail of shot towards the conflagration. Herself flash-striding back from the searing orb and away from the suppressing stream of pellets, Maiya nevertheless considered her opening attack a success. She had gotten Ippo to move, thus opening up a straight shot between Rosa and Trotskaya. A clear expanse across which the former was now blitzing, borne aloft a shaft of silver light, coalescing to reveal her gigantic sickle-sword cleaving an arc directly towards Trotskaya.

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Rosa's argent blade cut through the wind to strike true, its lunatic edge threatening a clean decapitation. Yelena, touting no foolhardiness, sprang back from the blistering slash with immediate effect, the falx edge missing her throat by a tight margin.

The battle was Yelena's immediate concern in the material world; in her mind, calculations whirred to determine the nature of the opponents that faced her. Having heard about the weapons at play with the gun-witch from a faithful Shark of hers, she could gauge a rough-edged idea of what to expect from her. This one, the woman who swung this falx, apparently imbued with a similar magic to what engineered Maiya's firepower, proved a different beast altogether. What interested the seraph the most was that her opponent appeared to lack mechanisms for dealing with her at range - consequently, up close and personal would be her strongest suit without much doubt. From the fore-acquired information, plus their brief verbal engagement beforehand and her own familiarity with sword combat, Yelena could formulate a rudimentary profile of her two opponents, and an array of tactics with which to battle them. By the time Rosa's sword had come to a halt from its swing, she already knew what her next action would be.

Back in realspace, Yelena stood to face the fast-recovering dark knight, nearly ready for a second swing. The seraph had to open her mouth but a centimetre: a sharp, flanged beeeeeeeeeep ripped through the air at once, a reminder to more technologically-advanced passers-by of an antique modem's dial-up signal. To simultaneous effect, she raised the arm gripping her rocket-rifle - on her wrist, the muzzle for her plasma-torch began to glow. Before Rosa could blink, a gout of white-hot gas erupted from its vermilion maw, lashing the air like a flesh-burning tongue.

Meanwhile, Ippolyta - having readied herself at the beep as if it were a dog-whistle - sprang back onto the battlefield, landing ten metres to Rosa's right side with a roll. Her two murderous shotguns raised to face her, she tapped on the triggers at a typewriter's pace, a fusillade of thunderous barks heralding a deluge of flesh-ripping shot as the lash of plasma flowed toward the same mark.

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

If the sheer celerity with which Trotskaya had summoned her other to flank Rosa surprised the Caerelian falcatrīx, the nature of the attack struck her as somewhat uninspired. Melee-oriented opponent? Switch to contactless close-range spread and saturate the air where she stood with fire and lead. A reliable strategy, to be sure... but mistaken, as Rosa already knew. To not use this opportunity to flee from the swordswoman was fault number one, apparent when the dual tempest of plasma and metal phased through the forth-stepping incorporeal shadow that Rosa had become, striding right through flame and flesh to end up directly behind the red-hooded warrior, regaining her form as she pirouetted into a rending slash; she was not about to let up on this Yelena Trotskaya anytime soon.

Nevertheless, Rosa's grim already took upon a minute quiver as frustration fomented over having to use her Shadowed Stride not two moves into a fight, a pattern that boded poorly for her endurance. She needed a second of respite to make it up, and if Maiya had taught her anything, it was of the value of choice conversation. She did not even wait to witness the outcome of her strike before running her mouth as only a student of La Tiradora could.

"Your friend there has quite the tongue on her! I've the sense to cut it off and put it to better use!"

Besides, that might just buy a few crucial moments for flaw number two to manifest; taking the pressure off Maiya. For in those instants of reliquary, the Gun Witch had drawn her fulguric dragoons and, in near-mimcry of her target, churned out a shimmering cataclysm of thunderstorm condensed directly towards Ippo's back.

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Lesson one: never reveal your ace at the start of the fight.

Such was the thought moulded in Yelena's psyche as she sprang into the air behind, somersaulting over a sword-swipe. Every little detail of the battle flowed through her like the synthblood in her nanolathed veins - the fatigued target below her, her phase-capabilities, and the time afforded by her latest attempt at battle conversation.

With a snap of her arms, her plasmacaster Fobos and her rocket rifle fixated themselves upon her target. The caster thrummed and pulsed, belching miniature stars to impact beneath with flesh-melting plasmatic fulminations. The oversized carbine in her left found its gaze, loosing a three round-burst of self-propelled grenades guided by hawk-sight. The twofold bombardment had concluded when Yelena's sabatons touched the ground; assuming the same outcome as her prior attack, she commenced a sequence of rapid, coordinated backflips to remove herself from the phasing swordswoman's sphere of influence.

Ippolyta, meanwhile, found herself under fire from the gun-witch. Possessing similar sensory implants to Yelena, she had heard Maiya land into position, and reacted accordingly to the sight of her two shotguns blaring electric fire. She did nothing whatsoever.

True to her presumption, the barrage of electric shot battered against her armoured, augmented torso, leaving scorch marks across the back plates. As bolts sparked across her frame, she stood entirely still for but a moment. Then, Maiya could have sworn that she heard a faint whining crescendo as the Manreaper snapped her head around hood and all, twisting to face her six like an owl.

"Oh? Was that meant to be a pain in the ass?"

Another colossal smirk materialised beneath Ippolyta's facemask as her eyes flared like spotlights, zeroing in on Maiya like gunsights. In similar fashion to her head, her arms twisted and flexed around at preternatural angles, unleashing another tide of full-auto steel buckshot on her new target.

"Clearly, you've never been donkey-punched before!"

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Confronted with Ippo's ringing barrage of buckshot thundering a cloud of death towards her, Maiya's boots made quick work of the burnished soil beneath them, kicking up clouds of dust as she flickered back and forth out of the line of fire, a blurry streak of chaotic speed with bursts of dust from gunfire impact nipping at her heels.

"Donkey punched? Mi burrita, I make a point to be on the giving end!"

Midway through another sonic dash, the Aladecian thrust firth her heel into the dirt, catching with its sole a rock pivot and using her momentum to send herself spinning like a top. From amidst that building tornado of black cloth and silvered steel, the barrels of two familiar longnecks began to blaze, flinging a glazing blitz of flaring orange nodes forthward towards the foul-mouthed Mecharussian. Each impact into the dust of one such incendiary bolt sent plumes of flame and earth blooming into the sky, each packing the force of an artillery shell and thrown out in such volumes they resembled fireflies in the night.

"But since you're offering, I'll give you a taste!"

...

No response.

Rosa's fingers tightened as she watched Yelena sail just beyond the arc of her slash, weapons still at the ready and rearing to blare a variously-composed medley of death her direction. So much for her initial attempt at goading. Yet Rosa was not about to acquiesce on the psychological warfare front just yet, after a only single failed attempt. She was just going to conduct it her way now. But first...

Dexter and sinister, Obscūra's hands deftly switched grip positions on her falx haft, left hand sliding up to the scythe's ricasso to better leverage and control its blade; surely a necessary step, given the display of sword mastery that followed. Wielding the laminate flat of Secula Negra, in a flawless series of almost dancelike steps, Rosa sent the plasma bolts glancing off the angle of her blade, reflected like light off its mirror black. From this fluidly elegant string of maneuvers, she deviated only once, in three seamless slices separating payload from fuze in each of the three grenades sent flying her way. The six resultant chunks bounced inertly across the ground.

"Maiya taught me many things about modern weaponry!"

Rosa dug her boots into the ground, pushing forward to close the distance betwixt herself and Trotskaya. Mid-speech, she aimed a flurry of rapid, nipping swipes at the red-cloaked warrior's hands.

"But she also taught me that the people who wield them never change!"

Everyone had demons hidden far below the surface, and Crēscerela suspected this Yelena Trotskaya had more than most.

"Do you really think you're different?"

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Cackling, sickly laughter from Ippolyta's awl-toothed maw ripped through the air as she leapt to the side, intent on evading the thunderous infernal barrage sent her way. She darted like a jet fighter, clawed feet aiding her as she sprinted along the side of a wrecked mechwalker.

Thick clouds of detritus earthen and metallic showered every step of her flight to Maiya's flanks, putting the mightiest dust-storms of the Gobi Wasteland back home to shame. Shockwaves rattled through the Manreaper's frame as each tonitruous blast singed her heels and caked her backside with scorched earth. If Maiya was allowed to keep this up for much longer, one blast would knock her down and leave her vulnerable.

"GWAHAHAHAHAAAAH!!! They call you a gun-witch! You shoot like a fucking neckbeard in a brothel!"

She had to get in closer, for surely even this bloviating gun-witch was not foolish enough to bombard herself. Or at least push her into a position where Yelena, presently preoccupied with Rosa, could outflank and distract her.

"So that would be straight down your throat, then?!"

Ippolyta's shotguns now lay in her hands reloaded with the spare magazine of high-explosive shells duct-taped to the previously-loaded one. With a spectacular jump into the ashen air, fireballs exploding around her like flak and silhouetting her against the night like a dark angel, she twisted her own weapons forward, prepared to unleash her own assault. Each shot would bear a fraction of the explosive power of these pyrescent blasts erupting around her, yet with any luck they would kill a baseline human with good haste.

"Oh, so you admit your shooting's even WORSE!" her eyes flashed with mordant delight.

---

A flurry of snapping, sharp slashes flew before Yelena's hands, clearly intent on relieving her of a finger or several. Relieve her of them Rosa might have, had her foe lacked the extreme celerity that came with experimental augmentations. Every slash materialised on her optical display, the visible trajectory of each directing her armed hands away from the vicious onyx falx striking at her. It mattered not; Yelena's first objective had been achieved - and something else was registering in her mind.

"Maiya taught me many things about modern weaponry! But she also taught me that the people who wield them never change! Do you really think you're different?"

That quip rang through Yelena's head like a gong. Still processing it in her head, her mouth began to expand at the sides and creep up her cheeks, sliding upward like a hook. The centre of the seraph's deep burgundy eyes began to erupt a brilliant, seething red as her tar-black lips parted. Yelena sprang backward, buying herself time to sheathe her twin firearms on her thighs as Rosa matched her spring to attack once more.

"No, I do not..."

Rosa threw her blade in a curved slash once again - the instant the swipe had entered the rest phase, Yelena barged forward. Her spring-loaded armoured frame crashed like a freight train into her enemy's lithe, sending the latter to the floor on her back like an uprooted tortoise. At once the seraph leapt bestride Rosa like a hawk, blades erupting from her gauntlets with a shriek as she threw her right-hand back for a punitive jab.

"I have proven it!"

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

"Oh, I admit that you'll wish I were just a neckbeard in a brothel when I'm finished with you, puta!"

Maiya whipped her pinwheeling arms around, transferring her rotational momentum into a whirling cartwheel and spinning free from the first barrage of explosive shotgun shells. Spared a moment to exchange her arsenal, her fingers twinned around the cool, lacquered grips of her pepperbox pistols. Even after a moment's contact their receivers shuddered with magic, wafts and sheets of misty condensation rolling from their glimmering barrels.

"Now..."

The carousel-mounted barrels began to spin up with an accipitrine whine, a mere hint that from their piddly little barrels those arcane pepper-pots could spit as much raw firepower as a pair of Vulcan autocannons. As Ippolyta readjusted her aim and wrenched at her shotgun triggers, Maiya simply stood in repose, twirling muzzles of her pistols pointed towards the ground.

"You're going to shut up!"

Her pepperboxes erupted with an unholy storm of ice and frost, sapping the moisture from every available source in a kilometer-wide radius and channeling it into the howling roil of gelid energy. Shaped amidst the chaos, a wall hewn of glacial ice rose in nigh but an instant, a monument raised against the shower of lead and explosives, stolid against the pops and crackles chipping away at its frigid bulk.

"Open wide!"

Still subservient to its master, even in all its resilience, that frozen monolith then gave way to the gaping hole Maiya punched through it, affording the gun-witch an advantageous firing slot through which she subsequently unleashed a churning cascade of supersonic crystalline shards, singing as they cut through the atmosphere on their trajectory towards Ippolyta.

"And take what I fucking give you!"

---

At this stage in the battle she had circumscribed for herself, Obscūra assessed her situation to be... mixed. All this time chasing her red-cloaked opponent around, trying to keep her within engagement range, hoping to bring the fight into melee range. Indeed her wish had just been granted; just not in the fashion she had hoped. Trotskaya had barreled into her like a rampaging bull, carrying the weight of a golem into that bodyslam and sending Rosa flying into the dust, winded and dazed.

And yet... her words had taken effect. A change had come over Yelena, a terrifyingly promising tranquil fury hinting at depths into which she could delve. She had bitten the hook, a fact rather inconveniently demonstrated by her action of standing over Rosa and preparing to plunge a row of claws straight into her gut.

Any sword-strike from this position would be a flail batted aside. A lethal failure, in short. Ila Violācea needed something to buy herself time. Something sudden and unexpected.

Without hesitation, the Caerelian slammed the silver-gauntlet fingers of her left hand into the ground, clawing at the dirt and feeling the telluric presence pulse throughout. Into this current of energy, she let course a surge of magic. Just as Trotskaya's razor fist was halfway along its descent towards puncturing Rosa's stomach, an enormous tangle of rosebrush brambles exploded from the soil, thorny tendrils woven from violet light ensnaring the cyborg warrior and flinging her away from the supine girl. Rolling to her feet, Rosa hefted her falx diagonal across her form, footing reasserted and eyes blazing with power.

"You have not. You are no visionary, just a marionette. Fed his words, strung to his fingers!"

Rosa's muscles tensed. She was taking a serious gamble now, tossing sand into the water in hopes of catching a current.

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Ippolyta's optics dimmed with frustration as she watched her explosive slugs slam uselessly into a wall of ice. Perhaps this gun-witch was craftier than she had first surmised. At least she had ample cover to reload her shotguns, their taped magazines both expended. The Manreaper slammed the next clips into her guns, but what was becoming increasingly clear was that she was heavily outgunned by her opponent.

Just as she began to wonder how on Earth to deal with this menacing foe, the frigid wall before her glimmered with magical power, before part of it exploded into a fulmination of shards and snow before an almighty punch. Perched at the breach was none other than Maiya Moréz, the archnemesis for the day; in her hands lay clasped two spinning pepperbox guns, their barrels rotating as fast as any minigun that Ippolyta could think of.

"You're going to shut up - open wide - and take what I fucking give you!"

Maiya poked her weapons through the icy embrasure and opened fire. Ippolyta found herself under immediate fire from a barrage of deadly ice spears, carving through the air with a volley of shrieks and kicking up a dust-cloud at every impact point. The Manreaper herself was prompted to cartwheel away when two such spears glanced off of her armoured body, leaving scratches across her legs and a dent on her left shoulder.

Once again finding herself on the run, much to her own profuse irritation, the seed of a plan nevertheless germinated in Ippolyta's psyche. This time her flight was aimed at one of the wrecked walkers standing before Maiya's castle of frost. Sprinting her way up the sides of the mech, closely followed by a trail of sparks shed by gelid spikes, she sheathed one shotgun and readied her other to resume fire. Her head and left arm snapped around to face the ice-fort, eyes growing narrow as they trained on the gun-witch's embrasure.

"I see you've made yourself a glory-hole! How nice of you to invite me to force myself into it!"

Tapping the trigger, she delivered a volley of suppressive fire to cease the flow from Maiya's pepperboxes. Once she reached the top of the walker, she would use her mighty legs to propel herself through the embrasure, knock the gun-witch out of the fort and engage her hand-to-hand where her firepower meant nothing. Suppress and close in for the kill, just as Yelena had taught her.

---

"You are no visionary, just a marionette. Fed his words, strung to his fingers!"

Yelena's initial shock at being thrown onto her backside by a magical vine in a manner most unceremonious transmuted back to another vicious smirk. How hilariously wrong was this Rosa - and how little idea she had of it. She had chosen her own path to ultimate victory - Mir had made that clear to her. She would realise the New World of her own volition. Now it was patently obvious that this was but a gamble on Rosa's part. An attempt at psychological warfare!

The seraph's thought pattern was enunciated in realspace by a raucous, mad chuckle as her eyes exploded into a sanguine red flame.

"Are you any different? You stand here and call me a puppet, yet you make blind luck your own master!"

---

Elsewhere, the war-torn air was filled with thunder - not of distant battle, but a crescendo. The trained ear could pick the racket of two box-like dropships flying in low close to the fight, both with triads distinctly Mechanocratic on their hulls. From the bottom of one erupted ten drop pods crashing to the floor just below, each pod ejecting a hulking grey warrior with a blood-red cyclopean eye-light and clasping a man-sized ion blaster in its armoured talons. The other disgorged a T-150 light hovertank, the armoured fighting vehicle's underside warbling with energy as it glided to ground level. Ion cannon-armed turret swivelling to face the ongoing battle between the quartet ahead, the tank began to drift towards where Yelena and Rosa were both situated. The soldiers, on the other hand, commenced marching towards where Ippolyta and Maiya fought, the only hint of their impending arrival being the racket of their metal sabatons against the dust...

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

"Are you any different? You stand here and call me a puppet, yet you make blind luck your own master!"

Crēscerela tensed, the sole of her boot grinding further into the dusty ground below. Trotskaya had reacted to her latest probe with... rather more glee than she deemed preferable, and had a sense that her verbal trap was already collapsing. As for the red-hooded one's words in riposte... though Rosa knew them to be hollow, they did somewhat smart nonetheless.

Yet not all was lost. If emotion had yet to drain from her opponent, then so remained arguments to be had, passions to be ignited. She just had to press the attack.

Twirling her massive crescent black about her form in lethal flourish, its cusp so sharp as it sliced the air it sang, Rosa shifted her stance as if preparing to lunge forth. Within the span of an instant, her body dissolved into a seething burst of light white and lilac, lasing through space to re-manifest just behind Yelena, her falx in full cleaving upswing before the rest of her had even coalesced. She was going to make this as vexing as possible.

"I cope with fate as I must! But you seem know that... why don't you do me the courtesy of telling me his name?"

Yet her words were nearly drowned out by the howl of engines saturating the atmosphere. Dropships, bearing the presumptive insignia of her enemies, sweeping low to the ground and disgorging from their steel bellies ever more machines of war. Ten metal eggs that gave hatch to hulking humanoid warriors near Maiya, and closer to her own end a vehicle of some sort wielding a turreted device unmistakeable as a weapon. In the blink of an eye, Rosa and Maiya were outnumbered thirteen to two.

---

Surrounded by a flurry of ice shards and smouldering soot roiling about in a whipping whirlwind of violence, Maiya cackled in pure exhilaration. The raw, unbridled action of frenetic combat, such was what she lived for! As Ippolyta prepared to bodyrocket headfirst through Maiya's gunnery hole, the hoplomancer handsprung and backtracked several meters, always cautious to keep her distance. Then, she did something quite unusual; though, with a customary wheeling flourish of her arms, she drew in her right hand her corresponding longneck, in her left she wielded her dragoon. An uncommon mismatch with implications unforeseen...

"Don't you know not to go sticking it places it shouldn't be?"

Punctuating her verbal assault with a peal of laughter, she rained her sizzling longneck on the Mecharussian, newly arrived through the ice-fort hole, and let spinning loose a fusillade of explosive fireballs. Yet their resounding incendiary booms masked the pounding of metal greaves rumbling across the expanse.

"You might end up with a burning sensation!"

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

From the way her mark tensed, Yelena knew that her statement had struck a nerve. There it was, revealed by the nervous manner in which Rosa shifted her feet - a chink in the mental armour. The war of minds was about to commence, and Yelena already knew where to aim.

Possessing highly-augmented vision able to perceive to within nanoseconds, Yelena foretold that Rosa would try and catch her off-guard from the moment that she exploded into a cloud of lilac and disappeared. If she could teleport, Yelena would attempt to strike from behind. In defensive, she would lunge forward, apparently to meet her head-on. As expected, the shadow-dancer materialised behind her, an upward swipe missing Yelena's back by but micrometres - a spark shed from her armour indicating that the strike had connected, but the damage was superficial. Of course she may attempt the move again to greater effect, of that Yelena was well aware.

"Why don't you do me the courtesy of telling me his name?"

Once again, Rosa stuck probes into the seraph's mind; once again, Yelena had her own plan of attack.

"There is no he in this equation. But do you want to know the name of my veritable marionette?"

Before Rosa could answer, Yelena's gaze found itself diverted to a barrel poking from behind a wrecked walker, a war machine floating into view. She had definitely heard the roar of the dropships overhead arriving to disgorge troops for herself, yet somehow had failed to account for the tank coming her way.

The hovertank emerged in full, its metallic frame gliding into view as gravplates held its armoured bulk a man's height off the floor. Atop the tank, a smaller antipersonnel turret turned its attention to face the fighting two; spooling up, it spat forth a barrage of crimson plasma bolts in an effort to dispatch both Yelena and Rosa.

---

"Don't you know not to go sticking it places it shouldn't be? You might end up with a burning sensation!"

Ippolyta's eyes brightened as a storm of fire shot her way, the exchange of gunfire commencing anew as she opened up with the shotgun in her left hand. Apparently her prior efforts to draw in close had not gone entirely to plan, such was to be expected as Maiya pulled forth her own electric shotgun and combining it with the infernal longneck. Bolts seared over the Manreaper's head as she ducked and weaved through the barrage, the firebombs exploding as they crashed against the machine wrecks. Likewise, Maiya's own evasive dance precluded Ippolyta's explosive shot from striking to any significant effect.

"Oh, you don't need to worry much about that..."

At which point the squadron of droid soldiers that had been approaching arrived, adopting firing positions from each side of the still-standing ice fort. The huge warriors trained their person-sized rifles upon the two fighters, selecting their targets and readying their weapons to fire.

"I make it a point of pride to make sure I have my fun!"

As the soldiers unleashed their assault, twin volleys of plasma bolts streaking through the air towards Ippolyta and Maiya, those soldiers who had targeted the former suddenly found themselves facing down a beast of a woman charging in at speeds that could be rightly considered frightening. In her free-hand lay the grip for some sort of whip-like weapon, a monstrous tri-bladed flail whose electro-cord unravelled at its mad, laughing, blaze-eyed wielder's command.

"ONE WAY OR ANOTHER!!!"

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Before her words of riposte could vacate her throat, Rosa was interrupted by the propulsive whine of esoteric machinery rippling across the battlescape and growling louder by the second. Gliding above the dirt like a spectre with a fluidity that belied its imposing bulk, the turreted war machine Rosa had spotted drifted from its cover behind the wreckage of its mechanical ilk, cannon barrel swinging towards them both. Yet within its humming metallic belly, she could sense the minds of its breathing crewmembers. An opportunity, and one Crēscerela was going to take advantage of with haste.

"Tege mē! Imperāvī istum!"

Were it not for Maiya's felid sense of hearing, Rosa's callout might have been lost in the overwhelming din of combat; yet to the veteran huntress, the slight woman's shout in Caerelian rang clear across the expanse. Fortunate in its timing it was as well, for at that moment Ippolyta elected to break off their one-on-one to engage the squad of cyclopean, golem-like soldiers trampling their way towards them, providing Maiya with the brief respite she needed for this switch in tactics. Whistling to summon her jezail, she jumped onto the speeding rifle mid-flight as it whisked the gunslinger over to her companion.

Rosa, after deflecting aside the first barrage of plasma bolts eructated her way by the tank's antipersonnel turret, shine-strode her way atop the armored vehicles chassis. With one clean sweep, she separated the remote-controlled turret from its housing in a cut so flawless the severed metal shone like a mirror. Before the tank's crew could emerge to engage her, she jammed the tip of her falx into the hatch lock like an impromptu deadbolt and placed her left hand, its silver gauntlet glimmering in the light, onto the tank's surface. While her focus remained on the fight, she addressed her red-hooded opponent one last time.

"Regale me!"

The next moment, Maiya had arrived in all her aplomb, jumping from her longarm into a sliding-stand dismount, hat tilted down and cloak billowing in her wake. Pepperboxes in hand, standing vigil over her partner. Rosa, assured now of her defense, breathed deeply, blocking all the ruckus of war from her mind. She closed her eyes and began to recite.

"Mentēs vestrās condōnāte..."

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

The crash of a battle-droid thrown against a walker wreck rang throughout the battlefield as Ippolyta finished with the most recent unfortunate fools to accost her. The machines were tough enough to dispatch any ordinary soldier, but not so to stand toe-to-toe with the Hound of Trotskaya and Matriarch of Hatred herself. Every one of them discovered that the hard way, yet had no time to deliberate on their failure before they were eventually snuffed out.

Cackling as if sick, the elated Manreaper strode toward her latest prey, the droid smashed against the wreck. Retracting her flail and hooking it back to her side, Ippolyta readied her hands to throttle the still-twitching soldier, wrenching and twisting until the helmet separated from the rest of the machine. The manic laughter was brought to a halt when she came face to face not with an emetic crunch and a blood-drenched length of spine, but an electric flash and dangling wires and circuitry.

"Oh for the love of fuck!" she screeched. "They're just ROBOOOOTS!!!"

Kicking the headpiece aside with the fury of a predator denied a lucrative kill, Ippolyta seethed behind her mask. Her newly-emptied hands balled, leading to a punch thrown at the walker – and a deep, fist-shaped dent in the armour.

"If I don't rip some bag of dick-twaddles to pieces in the next two minutes, I'm gonna-"

The Manreaper's ruminations found themselves interrupted by a thunderblast nearby. Having only now realised that Maiya had fled the immediate area, her frustration vanished with the dimming of her eyes.

"Looks like I got bigger cocks to take..." she remarked to herself, turning her head to the sky. "KORZINA, NOW!"

The individual called to her side turned out to be a half-man, a floating torso missing both its legs. Seemingly kept alive by a hideous facemask and cybernetic implants dotted all around its body, it was propelled to great speed by four anti-grav nodules affixed to its back and the stumps where its legs should have been. The red, goggle-eyed construct clutched in its mechanical graspers a machine gun – closer inspection would reveal it to be a heavily-customised MG 42 machine gun, complete with extended drum magazines, black silver and metal furniture and reinforced heat-resistant barrel.

"A nu chiki briki i v damki!" the strange creature identified as Korzina enunciated with a high-pitched robotic grate, before darting away from the battle.

---

"Mentēs vestrās condōnāte..."

Whatever that incantation of Rosa's was, Yelena deduced, it was highly unlikely to be good. This was especially given the swordswoman's recently identified penchant for playing mind-games, her next target being the crewmembers inside trying to throw her off of the hovertank. It was not so much that she could not destroy the tank if she so needed to, rather she did not want to reveal her most powerful device until she could be assured of both her enemies' destruction at once.

The presence of the same blathering gunslinger that had been duelling with Ippolyta for the past ten minutes magnified both the temptation and necessity of using that device, however. She was quick, far quicker than Yelena had previously thought, having effortlessly kept her held back by a few blasts from that longneck of hers. Not daring to get too close for comfort while she still held that dragon in her other hand, Yelena had to contend herself with firing back at Maiya with her own plasmacaster in whatever opening she could acquire from her rapidly-changing cover positions.

Seeing Ippolyta's pet fly overhead, however, revealed to Yelena that the Manreaper was preparing some form of distraction. Sensing her impending opportunity, she turned to address Rosa's prior query.

"Very well ... since you have been so patient, I shall tell you!"

Then, with a mighty spring, she flew from cover just as another shot from Maiya's longneck drew her out again, soaring through the air like an angel true to her moniker.

"I am my own marionette!"

She landed at a crouch atop a destroyed tank, successfully placing Maiya in between her and Ippolyta...

"Oy, Wicked Bitch of the West!"

A curt, warbling grate cut across the battlefront. Its source: the Manreaper herself, stood on one leg like a flamingo atop the same walker wreck that she had punched earlier. Cradled at her sides were two of the heavy plasmacasters that the battle-droids had brought to bear, each held in one hand. The leg not propping her up instead clasped the MG 42 that Korzina had so kindly dropped down to her, the talons of her feet holding firm on the trigger.

"You're supposed to run off AFTER you knock me up, not BEFORE!"

This quip preceded a volley of plasmatic and ballistic firepower that could do any attack gunship proud. The thunderous roar of incendiary bullets blended with the euphonic drumbeat of energy fire, the entire barrage devoted specially to the swordswoman atop the spiralling hovertank. Yelena, seeing the opportunity presented by the diversion, drew her own powerful handguns to bear, plasmacaster and rocket-rifle blasting at Maiya in suppressive tandem.

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Maiya could feel it now. Coursing through her veins, suffusing her flesh and seeping into her bones like an essence most basic, most primaeval in nature. The battle itself, mounting to a fervid pitch, in which violence and destruction reigned free. Sulfur smoke and petrol fumes searing the insides of her nostrils, the incense of war invigorating her like nothing else in the world.

"Quia imperātrīx tua sum..."

The stakes were high. Rosa, occupied with her incantation, was incapacitated; in such a frenetic environment, even the few seconds it required could be decisive. Against these two metal-riven mistresses of death, bearing down on them both with hellish fury given form in fire and lead, Maiya was alone. Guns in hand, she would have it no other way.

Cold in the heat, she took in the flow of information cascading about her, assessing, analyzing with just as much efficacy as her opponents' combat computers, sharpening her blunt tactics with an edge of precision. Her kindred spirit of a foul-mouthed markswoman, newly furnished with a hefty-looking machine gun delivered to her by some twisted, monstrous thrall, was zeroing in on Rosa, while the laconic red-cloaked one's attention had visibly shifted to La Tiradora herself. A second of silence. Then, both let fly a churning horrorfest of bullets and bolts.

"Oy, Wicked Bitch of the West! You're supposed to run off AFTER you knock me up, not BEFORE!"

Maiya's arms had already raised, pepperbox barrels spinning up with an aquiline screech as magic coalesced in the chambers. With every usage cranking them ever further up in power, no longer were they merely akin to a duo of pistol-calibre submachine guns. No, the nigh-solid polar vortices they spat forth in twin glacial streams hauled with them the power of Vulcan autocannons firing shards of ice denser than lead and harder than steel. Yet they were not aimed at Ippolyta and Yelena. No, they represented return fire of the purest sort, intercepting both enemy barrages of gunfire mid-flight and obliterating everything within their radii of contact. Not one single explosive slug nor ionic node was spared to penetrate past the incredible deluge of gelid death ripping the air asunder.

"¡No pasar, putas!

Maiya then shifted her grip, running her dual firing lines down the convergence, bringing them sweeping ever closer to each Mecharussian warrior until, at last, the suppressing fire forced them to briefly abate and dodge the incoming hailstorms. Afforded a few precious seconds before they resumed attempting to tear Maiya and Rosa several new orifices, the former of the two repeated her prior trick of constructing in moments a glittering impromptu citadel of ice around the tank and Rosa. As she stowed her salt-shakers, their receivers vibrating with arcane overload, she hoped it would last long enough. Insofar as she could defend, it was primarily through attacking.

"Alright then, why don't you two let the lady freshen up before so rudely barging in? If you wanna play quick n' dirty, stick with me!"

The sharpshooter reached deeper within her cloak, tracing along her holster harness until her fingers settled around two novel grips, yet unscarred by the ravages of battle. Thus she drew forth two hand mortars, cavernous silver barrels roiling with venomous green light. Maiya had been itching to use these, and use them she did; uncaring as to the accuracy of her volleys, she pounded at their triggers with reckless, wild abandon, launching with a throaty whoomph an arcing cascade of glistening emerald bombs. Upon impact, they exploded into vile showers of corrosive sludge, noxious gas, and bomblets meant to maim and gore. Midway into transforming the battlescape into a toxic waste field, Maiya furthermore heard a few encouraging last words...

"Nunc et semper!"

An earth-shattering BOOM pulsed from the battered and bullet-ridden ice fortress surrounding her companion, followed by the eruption of a massive, gaping hole in the fortification. Floating out over the frozen rubble, plasma barrel misting from the shot, came the tank, Rosa standing triumphantly atop like the tamer of a war elephant. The momentum of battle had shifted their direction.

"You see? Something a little more comfortable!"

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

"So it turns out I forgot about the whole ice-fort thing!" remarked Ippolyta.

"That is most apparent!" Yelena stated; she soon ducked as a crystalline barrage flew over her head.

Presently the battle was going southward at a dizzying pace. Contrary to her original plan, Yelena had failed in her entirety to dispatch the tank before Rosa could take command of it for her own malevolent purposes. It was fortuitous that the destroyed walker behind which the pair were presently taking cover was as strong as it was in the face of concentrated plasma cannon fire and an ice barrage of phenomenal power. Nevertheless, neither Trinity Knight dared to touch the ground beside the wreck rendered acidic by Maiya's corrosion bombs.

"Any ideas on what the fuck we do?" the Manreaper enquired.

"I do have one," Yelena remarked with a smirk. "Though you will not like it one bit."

~

"¡Señoritaaas! Come out and play-aaayyy!"

Maiya's taunting call sounded as she stood astride the tank on one leg like a flamingo, pivoting around like a human gun turret as the tank glided over the putrescent wastescape beneath its thrumming antigrav plates. Having thoroughly saturated the battlefield with acidic death, she had exchanged her hand mortars for one blazing longneck in her right grip and a gelid pepperbox in her left. All those troublesome two had to do was poke their heads out, and she would shoot them off like horns of ale on a cobblestone wall. But where in the name of Sarezia could they be...?

In the shadows around the field, however, the exordium of a new plan was in its birthing stage.

"WHAT?! You can't be fucking serious! You aren't going to get me sneaking around like some useless spook! The kind of idiot who waddles around with a silenced pistol!"

"If I command you to lick my arse clean, I expect it to be nothing short of spotless! Or I shall do things to you with a suppressed pistol that even your debauched little mind cannot comprehend!"

One low voice resembled a rattlesnake given the power of speechcraft; the other an impatient commander barking orders to an unruly teenager. Both were displeased in the absolute at their especially wretched situation and at the attitude of the other.

"I didn't even know you swung that way..." Ippolyta's rasping voice grated the ear.

"My padawan, you know so little about me," Yelena smiled. "Now shut the hell up and wait!"

~

Maiya continued to scan the battlefield for her quarry, eyes narrowed to gunsights. Wherever they had gone, they surely could not be all that far away. At the same time, however, there remained an inkling that perhaps the two had fled. Such would buy her and Rosa sufficient time to escape their current dangerous predicament.
Not a moment later, however, an all too familiar flash of red met with the corner of Maiya's eyes. Like a living sentry gun, she turned her head and weapons to greet the enemy. So too did both the plasma chaingun and the main turret of the tank, each directing a murderous gaze at the shape of Yelena Trotskaya...

"You wanted playtime," the Crimson Seraph spoke with a flange of menace in her voice. "Now let us play!"

"I get first throw!" Maiya yelled back in her quasi-puerile diction. Without a further word expended, she opened up. The tank and longneck belched raw fire at Yelena's form, while the pepperbox hurled wave after wave of ice spears, each spike destined to impale their collective foe.

Yet despite all of this Yelena performed the unthinkable. With inhuman speed and watery grace she darted to-and-fro, dashing along the ruins of walkers and battle tanks to evade a floor of green lava. She leapt and bounded from wreck to wreck like a spastic leapfrog as she effortlessly weaved her way around the battlefield, not a blemish from the trail of frostfire following her by the heel on her body. Bearing the focus of a laser beam, Maiya spilled thousands of rounds onto the field of death without heeding the uncanny ruckus of metallic clanks coming from the underside of the tank and terminating on its side.

Only when she turned her head clockwise to track her enemy did she notice where the other one had gone. The gun-witch snapped around to greet two soulless red optics, their owner having clambered her way atop the tank from a hiding spot underneath.

"Donkey-punch!"

Ippolyta's machined fist collided with Maiya's face, the force sufficient to dent the armour of a battle tank, fortunately insufficient to shatter Maiya's skull like a sandcastle. Nevertheless the momentum of her punch threw the Manreaper into a spinning kick; yet rather than the impact of a heel, Maiya felt the clawed implant clamp around her head with a mechanical clank. The next sensation to be experienced was sailing through the open air, having been thrown off like a ragdoll before Maiya could even register how she had gotten atop the tank to begin with.

Her erstwhile guardian gone, Rosa now found herself face-to-face with a towering amalgam of black clothing, cybernetics and berserk rage behind her. One that suddenly seemed far more frightening to face than the red-hooded variant that she had fought earlier.

"You ever been fisted before?"

Ippolyta's eyes flashed, a manic smile slithering up her cheeks as two sets of claw-like blades burst from her vambrace. Far from the elegant wrist-weapon that Yelena had armed herself with, these ones were lined with hook-like serrations, evidently designed to tear rather than cut.

"If not, then you'd better pucker up!"

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Three words.

No more, no fewer. No greater, no lesser. Naught in all the world entire, but three simple words cascading through Maiya's mind, her razor-straight path of thought cleaving the sky in twain as it traced the path of her descent. From a crushing omnipresence of metal overwhelming her world with force and malice, to the nigh-gentle arc of her ragged form dashed against the wind, until all she felt was dirt and pain.

Three words.

...

Fuck, that hurt!

Maiya stumbled to her feet, balance still rattled substantially by the brief yet rather severe thrashing that had just been served to her atop a cold steel platter, garnished with generous portions of ultimate psycho-bitch whoopass and smelling somewhat strongly of denatured brake degreaser. Rotating her jaw as numbness gave way to a thumping ache, Maiya then began to spit out the globules of mucus, saliva, dust, and blood that had collected under her tongue, spying among the blobs of lost bodily fluids a small, yet recognizeable chunk of white. Gingerly, the hoplomancer reached up and picked at the pulpy, macerated gap where her left-top bicuspid had once been.

Shit, that makes tooth number five.

Groaning, Maiya shook her head free of fog and disorientation, her vision clearing to reveal a red-hooded figure standing in graceful repose several meters to her front, perfectly still save for the rustling of her cloak in the plainsweeping winds, cowl pulled low over her eyes yet leaving perfectly clear just who was now in the murderous hybrid's computerized sights. Not that Maiya much cared at the moment; Ippo, currently bearing down on lone Rosa, was the current target of the Aladecian's ire.

"¡Las Estrellas! Didn't your mama ever tell you not to drink from the bottles under the sink?"

Her quip tossed forth, not waiting for the riposte Maiya turned back to face Trotskaya. Sword or no, what little of the vermilion-mantled warrior's fighting style Maiya had witnessed suggested she preferred to keep her distance. Needless to say, that was well and fine with Maiya. Lowering the brim of her hat so that it concealed her face, she widened her stance to a stable isosceles, fingers brushing against but not yet wrapping around the grips of her many pistols. Only the pearlescent gleam of her lupine smile could be seen beneath the umbra of black across her face.

"Well then, vaquerita. It's a showdown then!"

---

For all her training, for all her experience, the youthful Caerelian had never quite picked up the nous of battlefield blasé as her mentors had. Whatever else the oddities of Maiya's mid-fight eccentricities, it meant the gunslinger could never be manipulated by fear. But Rosa... as she stared down that seething juggernaut, wrought of steel and fissile malignity, tearing a rent through space on her way to savage Rosa in ways unspeakable... could not deny the seed of cold terror in her heart. But forged of sheer, unbridled will Rosa was not lest she turn that fear into an unstoppable force of determination. Rooting her stance, stable atop the rocking chassis of the hovertank, Rosa waited for Ippolyta to step into range of her falx. Eyes ablaze, she held nothing back.

Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Not in succession, it seemed, but all at once. Secula Negra and her wielder alike, naught but a shadow chasing dawn, flashed between reap and slash, phantom images left in their wake as Rosa presented Ippolyta with a procession of sweeping cleaves so blindingly fast one could not be told from the last... save to the eye of a harbinger of death so honed towards its purpose as Ippo. No matter the speed of Rosa's glistering swipes, jerking to meet the leading edge of her blade were gauntlets and claws aplenty, the sickle-sword leaving deep furrows in her composite plating yet not quite penetrating deep enough to damage irrevocably. And amidst all this, ever-closer stalked Ippo, the onslaught slowing her progress from meters to millimeters per second yet not quite halting it. Not before long, she would enter grappling range...

Rosa could not let that happen. Knowing it was far better to lose ground than to be caught in bare fisticuffs, she backstrode a pace across the tank's ventral surface and wound up an almighty rend in preparation for Ippo to step into its arc, so wide it could cover her from any angle.

And then it hit her.

No frivolous ephemera of any sort worthy of metaphor, no. What hit her, spinning from the massive cloud of dust and smoke that had consumed the battlefield of Maiya and Trots' tussle, was oh so unforgivingly tangible, splashing across the back of her lorica and blooming into a wave of heat and shock. Well enough to throw off Rosa's focus, allowing Ippolyta to close the distance and hammer her with a spinning heel-kick to the jaw. Stars in her vision, muscles spasming with erratic signals, having borne the brunt of such an attack, Rosa did not regain her bearings until she could feel the clutch of Ippolyta's cybernetic fingers around her throat, hoisting her into the air. Senses hazy, strength fading, she could not muster the energy to shine or shadow stride from Ippo's grasp. Only see the clawed fist poised to plunge into her own stomach, only perceive Ippo's words through the dense veil of murk.

"Don't scream, or do it loudly!"

[Blakullar]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

"Well then, vaquerita. It's a showdown then!"

Maiya's challenge came as she stood in a triangular pose, hands puffed outward like five-fold claws as they brushed the grips of her arsenal.

"No," Yelena declared, voice as gelid as outer space. From her scabbard came the sword, ignited with an electric flash, and into her hand once more came the plasmacaster she had been toting since the start of the battle.

"This is pest control!"

She raised her plasmathrower, and a scorching blue spear of heat belched forth. Maiya's response was to somersault over the blast, clearing the cerulescent spike without exerting much effort.

As she leapt into the air, her ever-faithful jezail returned to her like a faithful attack dog. She landed upon its barrel with all the grace of a tightrope artist, and jetted clear of another barrage of plasma bolts as she rocketed into the air. Crouched low, bearing a longneck in her right hand and one of her pepperboxes in the other, Maiya dove straight for Yelena like a hawk having sighted a rabbit. Magical energy seethed through the jezail, and upon Maiya's occult command the rifle belched forth a musket ball. Yelena dodged the bolt with a roll, only for it to snap through the air with an audible hiss and roll back towards her. This time, Yelena raised her sword into a defensive posture, allowing the magically guided projectile to collide with the plasma-shrouded blade. Two halves of a severed musket ball flew past Yelena's ears and struck a mechwalker wreck with a harmless ping.

Undeterred by Yelena's defence, Maiya flew past the supersoldier and banked left, readying the two remaining weapons in her hands. First to fire was the longneck, Yelena having to run aside to prevent herself from being enveloped by the subsequent burst of flame. The frozen onslaught followed like a faithful pack of hounds, tearing the ruins to pieces with an autocannon-calibre phalanx. With Yelena sprinting away, Maiya circled her overhead like a gunship, raining down barrage after barrage of ice and fire.

Yelena skipped through the assault, at times having to duck below a fireblast or leap over a gelid spear jab. Nevertheless, she sprinted up the top of one walker and, with Maiya coming in for another pass, she leapt outward. So focused she was on terminating the cyborg that by the time it was apparent she was sailing through the air toward her, feet outstretched like a hawk, she was sailing through the air too fast to stop herself in quick fashion.

WHAK!

Before Maiya could even register what had happened, she was on the ground, rolling into another machine wreck. She sprung to her feet just in time for Yelena to shove her back to the ground once again, grappled from behind with an uncomfortably hot object being pressed close to her neck.

"End of the line, you bloviating popinjay!" Yelena's voice sparked with malicious delight into Maiya's left ear as she brought the blade closer to her throat. She was going to relish this hard-won victory.

"Ay senorita, it is!" the gun-witch remarked with her usual confidence, no apparent sign of a struggle taking manifest.

Then Yelena saw what the gun-witch had probably planned all along; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Maiya's longneck drift towards the floor, a move that she immediately recognised from the start of the fight. The gun-witch aimed her piece to the ground, and fired before Yelena could flick her wrist.

The Crimson Seraph found herself catapulted high into the air as a smouldering, shrieking fireball. The pain pulsing from her face was great. Her hair had been singed to the point of near baldness and front blackened with caustic soot from the irradiated ground.

On the ground itself, the blackened dust scattered all around Maiya, who remained untainted by her own attack. In her offhand was her other pepperbox pistol, Yelena well within its icy sights; the gun-witch no doubt planned to skewer her in the air like a shashlik.

"Hasta la vista, baby!" she crowed as her pepperbox spun up.

Yelena had anticipated such, however; in her right hand was held her plasmacaster, Fobos, and her sword in her left, still clung on. The grenade was still loaded into Fobos' underslung launcher.

"Farewell indeed..." Yelena gravely remarked, raising her caster to fire.

She unleashed the fusion warhead with a resonant thump at the exact moment Maiya released another wave of ice bolts at her. Yelena was confident that if she was destined to die this day, the gun-witch would be following her in a cloud of plasmatic fire. And yet, as she watched the grenade and first frozen spear sail through the air towards their marks, a sudden dreadful realisation crossed the Crimson Seraph's mind.

The two projectiles collided.

~

It was at this precise moment that the night sky was illuminated by an almighty fulmination of electric red energy, an explosive, rumbling bass mightier than the loudest thunderclap causing the very air to shudder. The blast washed all over the battlefield, debris and dust alike being thrown high into the sky. Blasts of lightning thrashed all over like whips from hell, immolating all that fell under their infernal touch. The crimson eruption finally subsided into a towering mushroom cloud as flaming debris rained from the sky like meteors, crashing into the molten soil.

Such was the wrathful blast that had splashed across the back of Rosa's lorica and bloomed into a wave of heat and shock, well enough to throw off her focus. The same terrible blast that had allowed Ippolyta to close in for the kill...

~

This was it.

For all of her might and agility rolled into one deadly package, Rosa had failed. She had failed to fight off the terrible machine woman before her. She had failed her mentor and her people. And because of her failure, she was now at the mercy of this murderous cyborg and whatever twisted violations of her flesh the Manreaper had schemed just for her. Even as she picked up and held Rosa aloft, Ippolyta held back, feasting on all the terror seeping from Rosa's expression like a lioness would savour a gazelle. There was no soul in her solid red eyes or her grating breath, only animalistic monstrosity.

"Don't scream, or do it loudly!" so rang Ippolyta's jagged taunt as she reared her fist back for a razor-sharp left hook.

Without as much as a warning, the hand shot forward like a bullet. Punching straight through Rosa's thin abdominal plating, the serrated blade tore into her flesh enough of an opening for the rest of the fist to enter.

The tears that Rosa had cried in despair and fear transitioned into a trickle of blood as Ippolyta rammed her hand into her stomach, releasing her neck and holding her up by just the blade. Her fist twisted and turned, blossomed into hands, barbs of agonising pain rippling up Rosa's spine as her guts were churned and torn asunder from the inside.

"Oof..." blinked Ippo, not even bothering to wipe the fluid off her face. "It appears you're too tight for my fist..."

At that moment the mask obscuring her mouth and nose pulled away to the sides, unveiling her mouth. What Rosa beheld was not a pair of lips curved into a smile. Something infinitely worse was staring her down – rows upon rows of fang-like teeth, all sharpened to acute spear-points, affixed to a selachian mechanical mouth. The nose was entirely absent, only a skeleton-like triangular gap where her nostrils would be. Ippolyta's jaws parted, teeth grinding against each other with a mechanical squeal as the lower spread wide like the maw of a python.

"Maybe you'll be better at giving head!" The crystalline clarity of the sentence revealed that Ippolyta's speech came from a vocoder in her throat.

Rosa's shrieks of agony and terror died down as the Manreaper's jaws closed on her skull with a crunch.

~

Fuck, that hurts!

That was the second time Maiya found herself uttering that particular phrase in her head, half-buried as she was in the ground by the force of the explosion. Once again marvelling at the sheer resilience of her magical wards, and fortuitous that tooth number six remained firmly attached to her gums, she dug her singed self from the dirt. As she stood to her feet, she came to realise that the red-hooded one was nowhere in sight. Perhaps she had been vaporised by that blast; though somewhere in her battle-hardened mind she was suspecting that Yelena had survived her own suicidal bombardment. But where was the one with the black hood?

Crunch.

Maiya turned her head to find behind her, stood upon a crashed hovertank wreck, none other than the quarry she sought. Ippolyta the Manreaper was holding one of her shotguns in her left hand. In her right, however, was an arm, torn from a human torso, bite marks covering its length. It was when Ippolyta's awl-like teeth ripped another chunk of flesh from the limb that Maiya realised, upon spotting black nail polish on the pallid fingers, whose arm it was. Rosa's.

"Not the best entrée, but not the worst either," chirruped the Manreaper. "Could go well with fava beans, though. And a nice Italian red. Whaddya think?"

~

Commander?

Silence.

Commander?

Yelena was jolted from her quasi-conscious stupor to find herself face down in a pool of mud. The entire left side of her face sparked painfully, as did the joint of her arm. The chilling sensation of wind along her belly denoted that quite a chunk of her armour had vanished along with a part of her face and ... her arm.

Commander, I feel compelled to point out that you have lost your left arm.

"You always had a talent for noticing the blindingly obvious, Stepan!" Yelena snapped at the onboard artificial intelligence.

She had been catapulted a fair distance from the battleground by the explosion, but not outside of walking distance, if the smouldering wreckage of the tank was any measurement. Additionally, the loss of one of her appendages was far from immediately lethal. It was no more than a setback, yet a serious one nevertheless. A loss of fifty percent ranged combat capability when she would need it the most was never good for her prospects. Nevertheless, the battle was still in progress, and tipping into her favour; Ippolyta had met great success in vanquishing the swordswoman and her tank. All that remained now was to destroy that wretched gun-witch and find a way home...

It was when she recovered her plasmacaster from the dirt that a deep, cacophonic roar carved through the air and forced itself to the fore of all surrounding audio. A booming, guttural baritone shredded the sky, to the tune of a godlike bugler sounding a cavalry charge.

The infernal racket prompted Yelena to look behind her. What she beheld was a distant thunder, like a charging herd of rhinos. No, this was something far larger than mere rhinos. There was a mountain range behind her, one that had somehow eluded her attention before arriving on this battlefield. More assiduous inspection, however, revealed a matter quite more concerning.

The mountains are ... moving?

From the peak of one such 'mountain' a titanic trumpet blew thick clouds of plasmatic fire in tandem with the tonitruous bellowing from before. The burning blue fog unveiled what exactly it was that Yelena had first mistaken for a mountain range. A stampede not of rhinos, but colossal mecha, every one of them festooned with battle banners, missile blocks and gun turrets; carried in their manipulators were massive hammers pulsing and seething with energy, their cylindrical heads as vast in size as houses.

"Oh, fuck me..." Yelena's eyes grew wide with trepidation.

[Vistora]

The Proving Grounds

---

~ Yelena Trotskaya and Ippolyta the Manreaper VS Maiya Moréz and Rosa Vesperī ~

---

"Kolgan's Landing", western continent of Dixie, frontier world of the Imperium of Sidhae.

---

Wait



In the distance, tonitor rolling in waves across the scape, the motions and machinations of metal mountains approaching ever closer, claimants now to the attention of Yelena and Ippolyta.

But not Maiya.



Rosa?



All that could encompassed her, all that suffused her being, was that terrible realisation. The dawn of ten thousand stellar novae scorching away to char and ash all that existed atop, all the confidence and composure and glee at a battle satisfactory. Stripped down to the essence of what arose astride that realisation. That was her. Rosa. Just... gone, taken from her with not a modicum of dignity, not a iota's worth of time to say their parting before the passage, her final moments those of pain and fear and helpless desolation as that creature of despicable savagery snuffed from existence her lone lunar light. Maiya could feel it, pervasive through all that was, within and without. The failure. For all her skill, all her power, and she let this fate befall her dearest friend.

Her muscles fell limp. Her blood grew cold. Her nerves sputtered and died with naught but a spasm. Just like that, the gunslinger's bodily functions began to fail, shutting down one by one as she began to crumple.



No...



"Hey, what’s up with the horse-fucker!?"

Ippo's gaze, at last torn form the distantly-encroaching mega-mecha, had settled back on the badly flagging Aladécian, once brimming with vim and energy just seconds prior. Her comrade's shout too drew back the focus of Trotskaya, bemused by the sudden faint wavering of her enemy. Not intending to let this moment go to waste, Yelena immediately drew her sword with her remaining appendage, keeping low to the ground in caution as she sprinted towards the gun-witch, hoping to mop up the last of this battle's impromptu opponents before those Sidh mecha entered engagement range. Reaffirming her grip, Yelena charged at speed, using her mounting momentum to throw Deimos into a blazing reap aimed with razor precision at Maiya's neck.

Unquestionably, Trotskaya was then rather vexed, if not entirely shocked, by her blade's contact upon nothing. The gun-witch... she had quite literally gone up in smoke, her body dissolving into a gently roiling cloud of fulminate fumes. A few good-measure plasma shots from Fobos left the seemingly sentient haze unperturbed, as it drifted in idiosyncratic serenity, past Ippolyta, to the remains--for whole she was no longer--of Rosa Vesperi. Then coalesce it did back into the illusory shape of Maiya Moréz, shuddering fingers like mirages as they clasped the one hand of Rosa's mangled corpse. Untroubled by, unknowing of Ippolyta's cautious pokes at her intangible form.

Her existence distilled to this singular purpose of laying her former companion to rest.

Tears of dust swirling from the mist, she whispered what left of the elegy she could manage.

"Nunc ī, Obscūra. Cum Lūna es."

A single ragged breath sent rolling across her body, and Rosa silently left, her mutilated flesh fading to tiny motes of silver light, winking one by one from existence until but peaceful naught was left.



And then Maiya stood, returned to corporal form, shrouds of mist coalescing back into the black-clad body of the Master Scythechild manifest. And yet, something still had yet to return to normal. The veils of darkness blooming from her corpus like wind and flame, perhaps, or the inexplicable shadow that had fallen upon the sky in the character of an eclipse. Something was fated to happen.

Trotskaya, ever vigilant, was the first to suspect that the situation's turn had gone terribly wrong for her and Ippolyta. Nor, naturally, was she about to stand around thumb-up-her-ass and wait to see just how wrong it had gone.

"Oh fuck... Ippo, bring her down! BRING HER DOWN NOW!"

Jolted into action by Yelena's urgent shouts, Ippolyta backpedaled urgently away from the stationary hoplomancer, tandem shotguns spinning into her palms and leveling at the shadeswathed gunslinger still immobile. Trotskaya, meanwhile stabilising Fobos against her body for want of a second arm to do so, trained its cavernous barrel Maiya's way.

And so the pair let howl forth a ringing fusillade of scathing gunfire, plasma bolts and lead shot saturating the air betwixt duo and witch, their reports a cacophony shattering the expanse to drown out even the pound of truck-sized sabatons still thumping forth in the distance. A veritable molten gale slung en-masse at Maiya’s nigh-motionless silhouette.

To no avail. Every projectile to enter the shimmering aura of rainbow black swirling in eddies and currents around Maiya was simply vaporised, sublimating into puffs of inert gas to be claimed by the vespers sweeping the burning plains of battle. No magnitude nor volume of fire could seem even to touch the grieving gunner, for the shroud of the Reapers had descended upon her. Effortless was her nullification of all the two could throw at her, and in realisation of this, a raw, frigid panic began to set in.

“Shit! Fuck! Cunt! Yelena, we have to go RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”

Ippolyta’s profuse barrage of profanity and follow-up injunction to flee did not go unheeded; coming to see in kind that remaining within any distance of that thing would be a mistake never to be learned from, Yelena promptly stowed her plasmacaster, pivoted on a heel, and bolted as fast as she could in the opposite direction, Ippolyta following suit moments later. The precept was simple; get away.



NO



They were not to escape. For set in Maiya's sights now was vengeance.

A great tremor radiated forth from where she stood, violently convulsing the ground beneath the feet of all three, the geological trauma so sudden and intense it tore minor rents across the ground's surface. From these gashes gouged from the rock, unholy flames of orange and black erupted, covetous fingers of Hell lashing at the two escapees until, with an accipitrine, ear-searing screech, chains of black metallic whipped from the clawing abyss and winnowed themselves around the tumbling bodies of Yelena and Ippolyta. No clemency to be had, bolts of crackling blue and purple immediately surged along the stretch of links, amperage enough to short and fry all that remained of their cybernetic augmentation circuitry... yet not so merciful as to bereave them yet of pain. Immobilised in an instant to face down the gun-witch's wrath, and still able to feel it. Brought to their knees in await of Maiya's verdict of damnation.

She traversed the distance in an instant, stepping through shadows within the air.
Silent.
Clutched in each hand were guns neither of the Mecharussians had seen before. Matchlocks, unadorned upon their rough-hewn cypress handles, their smoothbore barrels homespun affairs of hot-hammered steel.
Focused.
One of them she raised. Pointing at Yelena Trotskaya's head. None had a moment to speak before she pulled the trigger, releasing a perfect spine of silver to cleanly pierce through the span of her cybernetic brain. But an instant, and the lights in the Red Tigress' eyes went dark. Ippo could still see her own reflection in those glassy orbs as the crimson-cloaked figure lightly collapsed to the ground. Gone.
Cold.

Ippolyta's flanged jaw of razor split open wide, belting forth a horrid howl of unimaginable wrath, a sound like sawblades chewing through scorched metal and plasma jets cracking spark ceramic ripping the air asunder. Yet Maiya was unimpeded as she raised the second pistol skyward, barrel pointing up. Directly overhead, a vast swirl of ebon clouds gathered into an accelerating vortex, like the precursor to a tornado rearing to rape the landscape. What emerged from that tempest, nevertheless, was not a funnel cloud, but a tube. A tube several hundred metres in diameter, forged of glimmering silver and grooved with helices upwards through its interior. Downward its apex plummeted, growing ever more in length until it rested just ten metres above them, a gun barrel of godly proportions hanging overhead.

Maiya pulled the trigger.

Like the ejecta plume of a stratovolcano, or the exhaust stream of a rocket in boost phase, or simply the cumulative grief and fury of but one woman now so very on her lonesome, a tremendous, seething column of nuclear fire erupted. Impacting the ground on which one stood and one knelt with the all force of a world-ending meteor, cataclysmic energies rippled forth from the point of impact and fusing all soil and debris in a kilometre-wide radius into glass mosaic. And within that divine pillar of pure destruction, the scream that penetrated the atmosphere was then one of pain. Pain as flesh melted and bubbled away into rancid, choking vapours, pain as rivulets of molten cybernetic amalgam encroached into blood vessels bursting like firecrackers as their contents flash-boiled to explosive steam, pain as bone splintered into a million hateful barbs piercing incandescent, pain as all the misery, all the agony of a thousand ravaged and slaughtered were returned ten thousand times upon the soul of the damned, until beneath the concentrated heat of a dying star, it withered away at last.

Ippolyta was gone, and not even her ash remained.



Where once there were four, there now was but one. Maiya Moréz, they called her. Master Scythechild. Death Warden of Aladécia. La Tiradora de la Muerte. So many other titles besides. Meaningless now, especially when appended upon who stood in her place. Once a revenant, her vengeance now exacted she was but a wraith. Aimless, tormented. Yet slowly her head turned to the rhythmic thumps that intruded upon her moments of quiescence. The battalion of enormous mecha, now nearly upon her, seemingly clueless as to the fate each thundering footstep brought them closer to.

You dare disturb my moment of mourning?

Maiya raised her twin matchlocks, knuckles whitening.

So you too beg the clemency of death.

Their march did not slow or cease.

Very well.

Silence be merciful.

And thus, she pulled the triggers.