A Mon Seul Desir II

“So much for ‘honor’ in Honor Battle, huh!”

Green streaks of light grazed his cheval mid-air. Graham thrust his SS-Shield forward, blocking a beam of light aimed straight for his cheval’s chest.

The Lionheart was sturdy, but Graham wasn’t so sure it could tank something like that.

“Typical Leticia maneuver,” Coleda’s voice crackled over the radio. “Don’t tank the fire. Land and find some cover!”

Another set of beams of light barraged the Lionheart. Each beam that hit the SS-Shield howled and shrieked before dispersing into smoke. The Lionheart hadn’t even reached the ground, and yet its shield was already getting quite the workout.

Graham’s eyes followed the trails of light, scanning for Leticia’s precise location, even through their unrelenting attack.

The Lionheart plunged to the wasteland below. The unsteady impact dug Graham into his seat. In a split second, he thrust the cheval behind a nearby hill. A few more beams followed him until they eventually came to a stop.

“I thought you might be the type to shoot me even before I got on my feet,” shouted Graham over the open comms.

“I’ll give credit where credit’s due.” A familiar, haughty girl’s voice answered back. “You’re better than a clay pigeon, but not by much.”

Graham laughed. “I have a reputation for being hard to kill, I’ll have you know.”

Leticia’s tinny voice echoed between the canyons, mocking yet resolute.

“Consider your reputation tarnished starting today.”

Graham couldn’t figure out where Leticia was. He counted one, two, no, three—half a battlefield’s worth of plateaus he could use for cover. He could use those while he triangulated Leticia’s position.

Other half of the field's wide open. So she must be—

When Graham emerged from cover, a barrage of solar beams met him a mere second after. Several sizzled off his SS-Shield. He boosted from one rock to the next, while slowly getting a bead on her location.

He drew his cheval’s retracted solar axe, ignited and extended it, then thrust to his right. He hid behind another rock, then—

“Gotcha!”

Graham sprung from behind a boulder, ready to strike at Leticia.

A white box?

A big white box welcomed him instead of Leticia. It was barely half the size of a cheval, only a cube with guns strapped to it:

A turret.

“I’m right here.”

Graham turned toward the voice. He swung his shield in front of him. Just in time—a large, heated beam struck the center of his shield. The force threw the cheval back several meters, and warped the SS-Shield’s plating.

He yanked his cheval’s control lever, recovering quickly to rush behind another giant boulder.

In that moment, then, he finally caught a glimpse of Leticia’s cheval.

Rectangular in silhouette, black and white harmoniously painted in large swaths across its chassis. It must’ve been a customized Grantz, a unit already known to be heavily armored and specialized in ranged combat.

It looked like a mini-fortress, having solar rifles, cannons, and gatling guns strapped to it everywhere like a metallic Rambo.

To have deployed a decoy turret before the battle even started, with firepower enough to create pressure…

Only to finally strike with her main unit, with vastly superior firepower…

Leticia wasn’t just some crack shot. As Coleda said, she didn’t carry that B-rank lightly. She was more than that.

The turret was her first trick, and it certainly wouldn’t be here last.

The fires of combat continued to rage on between Graham and Leticia—a one sided exchange of endless solar beams, and Graham, with nothing to show for it.

Graham barely made headway for the next few minutes. Beads of sweat had wet even his pilot suit, but it felt like Leticia hadn’t even broken a single one.

The corners of his SS-Shield had been warped by continuous heat. Burnt metal crisps fell off the sides of his armor.

The Lionheart took a few grazes with nothing but slight burns, but he feared direct hits would spell disaster.

Leticia’s Grantz rained a seemingly infinite amount of fire any time the Lionheart would emerge from cover. And every time, he’d be forced to hide again, staggering any effort to get in close.

Graham couldn’t shoot a gun to save his life outside the cheval, and the Lionheart itself lacked any ranged weaponry.

His options were limited.

When does this thing run out of ammo?, thought Graham, who placed his bets on attacking during her downtime.

But Leticia’s second trick was already afoot.

Not all her guns fired simultaneously. She made sure fire would always be thrown Graham’s way, but another set of hands reloaded the guns that weren’t being expended at any given moment.

Her cheval was nothing short of an assembly line of bullets.

“Is this the best Maya’s ‘knight’ could muster?” Leticia gloated while pre-aiming at Graham’s location. “Hard to kill? Come on out, and prove your words aren’t all bluster!”

A deep breath escaped him. He listened in for advice—any advice that Coleda could give him right now, as an endless stream of beams whizzed past outside his cover.

He glanced at the distant switch for the ‘magic trick’. Its silver shine tempted him like a dragon to gold. He fought the temptation to find out what it was all about. But as his finger crawled towards it—

“What’s wrong? You’re getting pinned down!”

Graham growled. “No shit!”

He was starting to paint a picture of Leticia’s fighting patterns. He could also trace her voice, pinpoint her location. The knowledge was coming to him.

But the controls were heavy.

He gripped his control lever, and while it slid when it should, it weighed down—again, it only moved, but couldn’t foresee. Couldn’t listen.

The doubt crept back to him. The sounds of the battlefield blurred. His body floated in complete darkness.

…

What am I doing here, again?

Graham didn’t ask for this fight. He only fought because Maya said so. What was he hoping to achieve?

A career loser who lost every fight that mattered, and even those that didn’t. Sure, he’d fought off the headhunters back in the city, but they were all in chevals not built for fighting, weren’t they?

In the face of an opponent who knew how to fight, and what to fight in, what was he?

A mook?

A peon?

There was no use. If he couldn’t close the gap, then there was no chance in hell he could fight back, let alone win.

He can just step out, and get shot, and that’d be the end of it.

…

“Graham? Are you there?”

A voice spoke from the other side of the communicator.

Not just any voice.

A girl’s.

Sweet and steady, with practiced nobility. Unsullied innocence, yet tinged with subtle maturity.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten you into this!”

A voice so familiar, he’d never forgive himself if he’d forgotten it.

At any moment, she could just say:

‘I love you.’

“Maya…?”

A third voice came in—another girl’s. That rowdy, heated inflection that always pulled him back up, when the world told him to stay down.

“Get up. Don’t you dare lose like this!”

“...Leena?”

“Gram, these two came to see you.” Coleda broke between their voices. “They wanted to have a few words with you.”

Graham lit up. The darkness surrounding him faded almost as fast as it came in. He could hear Leticia’s suppressive fire again.

“If I had known Leticia was this out for blood for you… if I had known about your history… then I wouldn’t have…!”

Maya trailed off, cutting off her tears.

“That’s not it.” Graham shook his head.

“Haven’t you gotten a bead on her yet?” Leena’s voice chided gently, “I daresay she’s given herself away by this point.”

“That’s not it…!”

Graham’s hand crept away from the silver switch he’d unknowingly reached out to.

“I chose this fight.” Graham gripped both control levers again. “You might’ve chosen me, but I chose to fight. And fight I will.”

A fire stirred within him again. His heart beat. It has been for a while, but again, he felt it, vividly.

A low hum sprung from beneath him.

The controls—they were lighter.

Then a smile—not of acceptance, but of defiance—emerged from his lips.

It was time to eliminate a thorn on his side.

“I’m gonna win this. For you.”

Graham recalled the location of the turret. Its near constant aiming-then-firing created unnecessary pressure on him all throughout the fight.

He gripped the solar axe, readied his now seared SS-Shield, and girded his loins. The Lionheart leapt out of cover and dashed diagonally at the turret.

“Fool!” Leticia shouted as she opened fire at Graham.

Her shots trailed just behind him. What? Leticia couldn’t understand. Her targeting computer could barely track the Lionheart. The cheval—it moved at a higher speed than she’d known.

Her turret wasn’t faring any better.

Leticia clicked her tongue. She pulled down a pair of targeting goggles to help her manually aim. Two shots left her cannon’s muzzle.

Graham snapped to the left. The first shot fizzled off the SS-Shield. A second grazed his leg, burning half a plate off the Lionheart’s armor.

A damage alert blared in the cockpit, but he deafened himself through it.

He rounded the turret, spun his cheval, and then cleaved through it in a single strike. It short-circuited, then exploded like a firework. Graham spun his shield towards the explosion, fending off the shockwave.

And just as quickly as he’d emerged, he retreated back into cover.

Leticia gnashed her teeth. “You’re a tenacious dog, aren’t you?”

That’s one down. All that’s left is her.

Graham didn’t even humor her a response.

He was in a trance. It wasn’t his usual frozen stupor of cold darkness and silence. No—quite the opposite. Everything was brighter than usual. Time slowed. He could see her shots. Her movements. He knew time didn’t slow, but he just felt it.

But even through this small victory, he knew.

She’s the real deal.

He couldn’t get her to commit a mistake. Taking out the turret was a calculated risk, a legitimate outplay.

But that was an inanimate object.

Leticia was still a typhoon of destruction waiting to happen. A living being capable of ending this fight, if he made even a single mistake.

“Let’s stop wasting both our time, shall we?” Leticia radioed from beyond Graham’s cover. “Killing my box isn’t doing you any favors. All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. You can’t touch me still.”

Then something dawned on Graham.

He’d realized Leticia hasn’t moved much since the beginning of the fight. He did the mental math, and surmised that while he moved around a lot in the fight—Leticia has only done a third of the distance.

And it wasn’t only because she was fighting at a range.

Her Grantz was heavy.

How could it not be, when it carried a battlestation’s worth of weapons on its back?

So if he could encircle her—

Graham darted out of cover and rushed Leticia’s location. In response, she bombarded his cheval with countless beams.

He zigzagged into a nearby rock pillar. He dashed again, shield facing Leticia’s solar barrage, to the next pillar. And again.

With each sprint, he inched ever so closer to her.

But Leticia was no fool.

She slid into cover herself, predicting where the Lionheart would emerge next. There were only two directions he could come from, after all. A 50-50. She pre-aimed a heavy solar cannon to her right, then—

The coin flip failed her.

The Lionheart emerged from the opposite angle of the plateau, its solar axe held high in the air, ready to cut her Grantz to ribbons.

Leticia clenched her jaw. She stepped back.

Too slow.

Graham let out a fiery howl. His axe slammed into the Grantz’s side, cleaving through rows of bolted-on rifles and gatling guns in a single swipe. They fell into the badlands dirt, destroyed and useless.

Graham smirked. I could go for more!

As he thought. Her Grantz had no shield, swords, or blades that could reasonably defend against close-ranged attacks. He pushed the offense and swung again, aiming at the Grantz’s opposite side.

But Leticia drew her third trick.

A jitte-shaped solar dagger shot out of her shoulder, a small claw arm wielding it. The dagger locked the axe between its green blade and solid state-plated hilt.

Graham grunted as he tried to pull the axe out of its vice grip.

“Hah! You must take me for a fool!”

Leticia snickered at the captive Lionheart. She pointed a rifle at the solar axe. With one clean shot, a beam of light severed the axe head from its handle. The axe head clanged onto the ground, and the force of the shot threw the Lionheart back.

Just as Graham prepared for her—

—She could prepare for him just as well.

Leticia aimed another shot:

This time, at her opponent’s Feather.

That’s when Graham realized.

She had enough firepower to just fry it off without cutting it.

Graham slid down, grabbing the fallen axe head from the ground. He tossed it at Leticia’s Grantz to cover his escape.

The slab of metal banged against her rifle, knocking it off aim as a beam of green energy left its barrel, shooting it into the sky.

He dashed backwards and hid behind cover once more.

Graham scrambled for any weapons he had left. He slid the cockpit’s touchscreen list, looking for any weapons he could still use.

He still had one Solar Sword to use, but it was a weapon he had little familiarity with.

Yet again, his fingers crawled their way to the distant silver switch.

He could smell victory—the possibility of victory—so close, yet so far.

If he could just reach for it. If there was any magic that could save him now, it had to be that.

“H-hey! Gram, what’re you doing?” Coleda’s video screen flashed into the cockpit’s heads-up display. “I told you. We only do that if it’s totally necessary.”

“I know!”

Graham swallowed the gravel in his throat.

“Then,” Coleda nodded. “Are you ready?”

“I am.”

Graham flicked the switch.