Chapter 456: Property Damage 2

The great sword led the way. It came around the corner first, its blade-tip dragging a long furrow through the asphalt of the street and sending up a screaming spray of sparks.

Then the rest of Lilianna’s mecha followed. Its shoulder pods reloaded, the wing-cannons glowing soft white again. The twin forearm beam launchers tracked his mecha and fired both at the same time.

Neville’s mecha threw itself behind a parked hover-bus, and the beams sliced the bus in half. He came out the other side at a sprint, daggers free from their forearm magnets.

clack, clack, clack.

He threw all three in a triple-fan toward Lilianna’s mecha’s joint seams. The little repulse cores hummed.

The blades flickered through the air on tight, curving paths, snapping past Lilianna’s mecha’s guard and bit into the seam where Lilianna’s mecha’s right pauldron met its torso.

THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

Lilianna’s mecha staggered half a step, and the pauldron sparked.

The daggers, doing their job, slipped free and zip-zip-zipped back through the air to Neville’s mecha. It snapped into their forearm magnets with a satisfied clack, clack, clack.

Lilianna brought the great sword up over her mecha’s head with both mecha hands. The blade was so long that its tip scraped the underside of an overhead skylane. It sent a shower of sparks raining down.

Then she swung.

She swung at the building beside Neville’s mecha. A residential tower with forty stories. Fully occupied, in the simulation, by little colored dots that represented evening commuters returning home.

The great sword bit into the building’s base at a forty-five-degree angle and kept going.

The tower tilted and began to fall.

Towards Neville’s mecha.

Neville understood what she was trying to do. She was trying to bury him under the rubble. Make him either eat the building or use his thrusters to escape it.

If he used the thrusters, then he would be the one tagged for the collateral damage that followed, because the simulation tracked the last impact vector to assign blame.

It was smart.

Neville’s eyes narrowed inside the cockpit. His mecha jumped forward, into the shadow of Lilianna’s mecha.

The falling tower came down behind him, smashing into the street where he had stood. Dust exploded outward in a gray wall.

Neville’s mecha ran through the dust cloud, plasma blade drawing free in his right hand, and emerged inside Lilianna’s mecha’s guard.

Lilianna’s mecha tried to turn, but it was too slow.

Neville’s blade slid up under the Bastion’s left armpit, but it was too hard.

ZRRRRRRTTTT-KRAKKAKAK.

Neville withdrew his blade and kicked off Lilianna’s mecha’s torso to somersault backward. His mecha landed crouched on the rubble of the fallen tower.

The two mechas stared at each other across the broken street.

The damage counter, very politely, updated.

[PROPERTY DAMAGE — PRETTIESTLILY +71,200 / NEVILLE +40]

[CIVILIAN CASUALTIES — PRETTIESTLILY +3,488 / NEVILLE +0]

Lilianna then saw Neville’s mecha blip skirting the edge of a residential tower’s rooftop, three klicks east.

’Send another barrage,’ the voice in her head said. ’Push him into the office sector. The simulated population density there is the highest. Every panicked NPC he flies over without taking evasive action will tick his score down.’

"He’s already moving."

’Then move faster.’

Lilianna’s twin wing-cannons unfolded.

Chh-thunk. Chh-thunk.

The cannon barrels rotated into firing position along her spine. She could feel the weight settling into her shoulders, the deep, low harmonic of capacitors ramping toward discharge.

FOOOOM.

Another volley scorched across the sky in twin bars of white-blue plasma. They tore through the airspace where Neville had been standing earlier.

He was gone again.

When Lilianna saw Neville’s mecha again, it was flickering sideways. The cannon-fire kept going and punched through the roof of an empty hover-taxi station.

It detonated against the side of a glass-walled skyscraper, sending a cascade of digital glass tumbling four hundred meters to the street.

[PROPERTY DAMAGE — PRETTIESTLILY +85,400/ NEVILLE +40]

[CIVILIAN CASUALTIES — PRETTIESTLILY +3,488 / NEVILLE +0]

"F*cking hell!" Lilianna cursed under her breath.

’Adjust your firing arc. You’re being sloppy again.’

"Sloppy? Can’t you see that I’m so close to damaging him?"

’Doesn’t matter. You’re losing more points to collateral than you’re gaining on him.’

"Then I’ll make him take some of these hits."

’He won’t take them; he ramped up the speed of his mecha, remember. That mecha is just paper against your mecha. You already experienced that in Round One!’

Lilianna gritted her teeth, unable to say a word of retort, and banked left.

The fight unraveled the way the voice had said it wouldn’t.

By the time Lilianna had realized what Neville was doing — that the chase itself was the trap — her advantage was halved, and his confidence was visibly climbing.

Now, the momentum had flipped upside down. He had stopped running and went full offense.

Tk-tk-tk-tk.

A throwing dagger spun past her cockpit, repulse-core whining, and clipped the trailing edge of her right wing-cannon before snapping back toward its owner.

The damage indicator pinged, but the third such hit on that exact joint did take minor damage.

’He’s going for your wings again,’ the voice snapped. ’Don’t let him do that again. If you lose your wings at this point, you will really lose the round.’

"I know that."

’Then find a way to turn the tables now!’

Lilianna rolled her mecha onto its back thrusters and pivoted. She brought the greatsword around in a horizontal sweep that should have cut Neville’s mecha in half lengthwise.

But Neville’s mecha went missing again.

Whrr-zip.

Neville’s mecha had already moved above her. He had ducked under the swing and used the back-draft of her own thrusters to slingshot up.

He went over her left shoulder pauldron, and now he was on the high side. The plasma blade reversed in his right hand and lined up another pass on the wing root.

But Lilianna had already anticipated that he would do that. This time, she swung the cannon-wing up to meet him. She deliberately exposed the cannon as bait and, at the last instant, snapped her shoulder missile pod open.

Six warheads launched at point-blank range, in a cone that would have shredded a lesser frame.