As Arin charged into the woods, unshouldering her AK and holding it ready at her hips, she took in the situation in the arena.
"Okay... still plenty of trees..." she could see a smoldering circle of ash and tree-husks beyond the three meters of remaining treeline.
PFOW
She froze as a green blast flew into the air.
A moment later, a floating platform fell into the circle, where it wound up burying itself in the glassed dirt.
Well, I guess Paragon X found a use for the damn things...
In Warsport, floating platforms were handy for a lot of things. Like making yourself a target. Attracting magnetic weaponry. Being easily trackable by missiles and drones... But hey, you'd get a good view for the seconds it took someone to notice and shoot you.
Sneaking forward, she saw no sign of Paragon X. Just the platform, its hover mounts smoking and sparking.
They have the right idea, I guess... downing the damn things for cover.
The Zyr Paragon appeared, roughly picking up the hover platform before shoving it into the ground in a more upright position... one that could provide cover for his massive frame.
Just the sight of him made Arin shiver.
The zyr were a heavily cybernetic species. There was almost no way to determine what they looked like originally, since most of them hid their bodies behind metallic chassis.
Their champion looked heavy, almost half the size of the mech that had attacked her and covered in spikes. The arm they used to move the fallen platform was the size of Arin's body, and their other arm was clearly a weapons platform, featuring some sort of energy rifle instead of a hand.
Stretched across its body, the Paragon-standard nanosuit took the form of an etch-pattern in its metal frame, inside of which the lights glowed their standard cyan.
But what mattered to Arin was all the metal the zyr was composed of. She could feel the magnetic potential from here...
Do I go for it?
Her instincts as a cait sith knew that the zyr Paragon was her prey. She could potentially push them out of the arena quickly, given she was the natural matchup against a tin-can like them... But her more logical side warned her that the zyr was not likely to be alone...
Another blast sounded, but while she heard the fall of another floating platform, it did not land in the burned-out field. The zyr looked in the direction of the sounds, which happened to be toward Arin.
She froze, hand on her AK as the zyr Paragon began to step towards her, drawing on her psionics to ready her vogels...
"Your stealth is ineffective," the zyr said, their voice like the combination of nails on a chalkboard and an ancient paper printer.
It was even more terrifying to listen to them as Arin had to wait for her translator to render the language, which it did near instantly but still with a delay as Arin read.
"I find it still serves," Paragon X replied, appearing from a nearby edge to the ashen zone, their rifle at the ready. "Humans tend to trust their senses before the tools that help such."
Optical camouflage?! I didn't detect them at all!
They could have just walked right past her...
"We are not here to banter over your insights. Your task is to defeat the human. Do so."
"As you wish," Paragon X said, a note of annoyance in their voice.
They began to walk away from the zyr... directly toward Arin.
Shit!
She had two things actively operating against her stealth, and one of them was the glowing cyan lights on her suit. Panicking, she rapidly pushed her way through interface after interface until at last she came to the suit's customization functions...
Oh Cherry, thank you for being so fucking awesome!
A moment after Paragon X stepped into the woods, their optical camouflage activating, Arin's combat suit was transformed into a jungle-pattern ESPAF uniform, complete with a hood that hid the shield emitter she had camouflaged as a hairtie.
Once covered, Arin easily addressed the second issue compromising her stealth: Her eyes.
Earth cats came equipped with their own nightvision, courtesy of a special little structure in the lenses of their eyes called a tapedum lucidum. Cait sith, or as some called them 'catfolk,' had the same features to their eyes. While it helped her nightvision, the concentration of light also had the effect of making her green eyes glow; something Cherry had emphasized was a hit amongst their marketing team.
Well, it was about to get her hit if her opponents noticed...
Step... Step... Step...
As Arin shut her eyes, she heard every step Paragon X took toward her position, her ears flicking under the hood as they tried to turn towards the source of the sound under her hood...
Step... Step... Step... Step...
The last step ended so close...
Despite the fact that she had waited for only a few seconds, the suspense was killing her.
Arin risked a peek, cracking open her eyes just enough to see without completely exposing her tapedum lucidum...
Paragon X was right there!
This close, she could tell by the way the way the light rippled around their edges - and with all the trinkets they had, there were a lot of edges - from only a meter away.
Stifling the instinct to attack, as well as the urge to cry out, Arin slowed her breathing as she'd been taught, focusing on remaining completely, utterly still...
Paragon X slowly rotated about, searching the woods as they listened. The artificial gull sounds were omnipresent, loud, and annoying enough to cover for any number of audible sins against stealth.
But then they stopped, their torso freezing in Arin's direction. For a long, long moment, she suspected they were looking directly at her...
Step... Step... Step...
They turned away, continuing past her to the end of the forest before starting to move along the edge, following it away from Arin's position...
"Phew..." Arin breathed out, refocusing on the opponent she felt confident about taking as she watched the little timer in her HUD.
Modifying her nanosuit in a way that hid its lights was allowed... for a galactic-standard minute, before a ten GS minute cooldown. The point of Warsport was to be entertaining, which worked counter against strategies like stealth except in small doses.
The way to get around this, naturally, was to utilize stealth-based clothing and armors like Paragon X's optical camouflage, if not one's own natural stealth abilities, which only two races had evolved as far as Arin knew. Stealth suits tended not to be heavy in defense and more importantly heavy in the amount of power they needed, at least for the man-portable versions.
The Lottaz Law should mean Paragon X has only enough battery life for about eight minutes at most... She knew the battery limit for someone her size, and Paragon X was only a bit taller.
See Cherry! I listened to your briefings!
The zyr Paragon was dragging another platform into position for cover. Once that was done, they began to tear away the largest metal components, the hover floats, casting them back and away from the center of the charred circle.
Arin waited. She watched.
As soon as her suit's timer ran out, she was going in.