"Time to eliminate you."
The zyr paragon started to reach with its monstrous arm.
A laugh escaped Arin. "Hey, Spam Can..."
Shing.
"...Lighten up."
The sounds of nano-calibrated diasteel against metal rang in Arin's sensitive ears. The peal of her salvation.
The entire time she'd been trying to get closer wasn't to hit Spam Can with her power, it was to take advantage of the vogels she'd lost past them.
And this close, her fine control was enough to put a single vogel through each of the cyborg's primary ball joints.
Spam Can fell backward as he suddenly no longer had legs to stand on, his arms falling away a microsecond later, but enough to pull his fall away from her.
Arin wasted no time shoving off the leg and standing. Something inside flared with an unfortunately familiar pain.
Yeah... Spam Can definitely broke a rib...
Not to mention put her suit into the red...
She took a step toward her opponent. The little two-minute timer she'd put in the corner of her HUD ticking away as a negative count-up. She was twenty seconds over the time she set for herself, but fuck it, she could do hit-and-run later.
"Unexpected-"
"Shut it. I'm talking now." To her surprise the Paragon obeyed. "You know, no matter how well-designed a chassis suit is, going for the joints remains the biggest weakness. It's fucking basic, like how our suits only protect us from fatal damage."
Reaching down, she tested her power and found that the zyr chassis' torso was still too massive for her to lift with psionics.
"In other words, I still get to carve you down to size."
She smiled like a lioness with a fresh kill as she used her vogels to pry at the top of the torso, popping it off so she could see the flesh inside.
She expected to see an alien. Perhaps some shriveled, atrophied specimen. Operating little levers and buttons like some ancient B-movie puppet...
But what she saw was even more horrifying.
Three human brains sat in slots, a dome of transparent alloy leaving them on full display. As she stared, the Paragon nanosuit retreated into the torso to cover the brain dome.
"You're human..." Arin said, horrified.
"We are zyr. We possess human biological components. Harvested within the bounds of our conquest."
It was sickening.
"Harvested?" Humanity had been told that assimilation was a voluntary process. "You lied to us..."
"Harvests were willing. Or convinced. A proper dosage of pentathiline-tetrapaxide ensured compliance with galactic standards."
They dosed people into compliance...
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Upon loss, this unit will be decomposed for failure to meet objectives. It has been assessed that engaging in communication would also serve present combat requirements."
"Present combat requirements?"
A branch snapped nearby.
"You have been distracted."
Fuck!
Paragon X appeared, rifle ready.
Arin managed to pull one of her vogels in the way as a green bolt sped in her direction.
It hit the vogel, spiderwebbing cracks into it before the whole thing exploded. A small explosion sent its shards everywhere, forcing Arin to magnetically deflect and Paragon X to dodge.
As she dodged behind one of the zyr paragon's improvised barricades, another other shot was met by another vogel, which Aren sent closer to Paragon X for that purpose.
As it exploded, Arin reached out with her magnetic senses, trying to feel out anything magnetic about Paragon X...
She felt nothing.
Not because they didn't have metal, that much was obvious from their weapon, but because they were somehow blocking her power itself... Somehow, they had a field with zero magnetic permeability.
It was a perfect fucking counter to her.
"You piece of filth! You killed my parents!" Arin shouted as she looked around.
"I did no such thing," Paragon X replied in scratchy English.
"Liar! Your match against the Fourth Paragon, Leilat Station. You bombed the arena!" Arin reached out, pulling her AK back into her grip as she hurriedly slammed her last clip into it.
They were explosive rounds, which against a Paragon suit meant little except a lot of pushback. The most she could probably do with it was stagger Paragon X, since they were the least capable as far as shield-cracking was concerned.
She took two quick breaths, feeling out the arena magnetically. While she couldn't detect Paragon X directly, she could determine their rough position from the magnetic blindspot...
Chrwwww...
Shit!
Arin rolled just a moment before Paragon X fired into the ground where she'd been, a second shot melting her former cover a moment later.
The fucker was in the air!
After long moments of furious dodging, the available disruptor-blocking cover were mostly melted into slag. Even the zyr Paragon's one standing leg had not been spared after the half-second Arin managed to use it for.
She had only one option...
Turning her steps toward the zyr paragon's torso, Arin reached in with her magnetics and ripped the brain dome out of the chassis. It brought along a sickening trio of spinal cords that were encased in jointed metal, and she pulled the human shield in front of herself, counting on the Paragon nano-armor to block Paragon X's shot.
"You are ruthless." Paragon X said as they lowered their rifle, landing on the ground a few meters away.
"You would be too if your parent's murderer was in front of you!"
Arin checked her surroundings. She still had two vogels. The neodymium shards, some of which still had cutting edges attached. Even if Paragon X had a magnetic nullification field, if she sent them all at once and then cut her connection...
It should work... I just need to give them some momentum...
Arin reached into the well of her mind. Psionics had many expressions, but one control: Willpower.
Arin's suit pulsed purple amidst the red. Drawing on her reserves, Arin sent out her power in an all-encompassing wave, binding it to every small piece of metal she could as she accelerated them all at once toward the magnetic dead zone that surrounded Paragon X.
Almost as soon as she did, she cut the bindings, letting them continue on their own.
It was her final play, because she refused to run from this opponent. And she followed it by rising out of her cover as she dropped Spam Can, firing her AK...
Click! Click-click...
Arin stared, disbelieving. Everything she'd thrown at Paragon X was laying on the ground in an arc. Her explosive rounds had popped uselessly in the dirt.
For a long moment her opponent stared at her.
All it would take was one shot, and Arin would be out of the fight.
"You did your best, Arin," Paragon X said. "You are not strong enough for Warsport."
Arin ground her teeth. "You dare... You dare say my name after what you did?"
Once more, her suit channeled purple from the act of overcharging.
Lightning began to spark off of her, the nanosuit discharging the severe overage as it tried to handle the load. Arin's eyes bled. Her insides burned. The iron in her blood threatened to boil.
She didn't care.
Every bit of metal that surrounded her began to float. She was even ready to throw the zyr Paragon at the focus of her rage.
"I'M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!"
SLAM
From out of nowhere, a massive boulder slammed into Paragon X, striking with enough force to send them flying past the arena and into an opening portal.
Arin was so shocked, her concentration broke and everything she'd lifted came tumbling down as she stared at the boulder, which was wearing cyan lines from the nanites that had settled into it like a patina.
But no...
That's not just a boulder...
"Sorry I'm late! I just woke up!" The Paragon of the Cinbar Strata said in the most gravelly, girliest voice Arin had ever heard.
She was roughly humanoid shaped, with no apparent jointing or anything. Pieces of rock with their insides shining with a plethora of polished gems simply floated in a humanoid shape, and Arin vaguely recognized that they would fit back together into a single geode.
"Slzsh?"
"Yes, that is the human approximation of my name. Is the match over? Was that the only enemy?" She plucked a grenade off of a rock and offered it to Arin. "Want one?"
Blinking one eye at a time, Arin looked around before remembering the zyr Paragon was still in the arena.
There was only one rule.
With an almost mechanical flexing of her power, Arin lifted the brain dome and sent it flying.
"It's over now," Arin said, just a moment before the Paragon entered a portal and the bell sounded.
The artificial sky lifted, revealing a stadium full of rabid, cheering people. Humanity in all its joy, plus supportive aliens.
She scanned for the landing pad, and found it quickly.
Paragon X was being seen by a medic, they were holding one hand on their helmet, as if insisting they keep it on as they seemed to struggle to breathe.
Enhance Arin thought into her HUD, zooming in on the prey that had been stolen from her.
Pale, near-grey skin and scars... and a green-irised eye that looked eerily human-like. And almost sad. But no, Arin wouldn't let herself think that the one person she hated more than anything would dare feel sad for her.
Paragon X was the alien version of a cat. The eye invited projection, not understanding.
Arin committed the look to her memory.
Raising a hand, she pointed her clawed finger at Paragon X.
One day I'll rip that mask off, and look you in the eye when I pull the trigger.