Sousuke looked over the alterations done to the Japanese AS's for the joust event and had to admit that the resultant machines came out looking rather bizarre.
Keiichi, dressed in a racer's crash suit walked up beside Sousuke and looked over the machines as well
"Are those ASs carrying each other on their shoulders or are the legs just ridiculously oversized?" he asked.
"To be honest," Sousuke said. "I'm not really sure. Are you still dressed for action. I would have thought you were done by now."
"Yeah," Keiichi said. "Well, turns out we're still in it."
"Your AS barely passes the knee of a normal T96," Sousuke said. "What tactics exactly are you planning to use to compete?"
"I generally just pray for a miracle in cases like these," Keiichi said. "Anyway, see you out there, and try not to step on me when my machine falls apart."
"At the very least," Sousuke said. "I shall endeavour to scrape you off the soles of my boot gently."
****
And so the teams took to the field and waited for the sound of the whistle.
As the event got started, the Narashino paratroopers faced off against the so-called Nerima Red Dragons.
"So what do you think our strategy is going to be?" the man sitting with him asked.
"Well," Sousuke said. "I was originally going to suggest taking their captain out of the loop first, but I'm not sure that's going to be necessary."
As the mercenary said this, he watched the Red-Dragon's captin AS seemingly do the can-can backwards towards their own side of the field.
"There may yet be some sort of strategy behind those unorthodox manuevers," Sousuke declared. "Keep an eye on him."
"Will do," the paratrooper's CO said in the seat in front of Sousuke.
****
"What are you doing?" Sanzenin declared. "The enemy is that way!"
"Oh, who cares about the enemy when I'm right here?" Mizuki asked.
Karma was unloading on Sanzenin.
Heavily.
****
"What the hell is the Captain doing?" one of the Nerima team asked. "In the middle of the match?"
"There's something in this unit you should never willingly give up," the other pilot in that machine said.
"What's that?" the first asked.
"Plausible deniability," the other noted.
****
Without Sanzenin to effectively coordinate the Red Dragon, Sousuke was finding it rather easy to set the Narashino unit against them. The Red Dragon unit was very skilled, he had to give them that, but whatever bizarre tactic the Captain had in mind for them didn't seem to be working out too well.
And of course they couldn't stand against his skills, even with the...unusual arrangement the T-96s had for this event.
Every unit that came near Sousuke's AS found the balloon dangling over its head popped in a simulation of defeat.
Of course, there was the Scirocco out there, which was proving to be rather difficult to pin down.
Keiichi Morisato was showing to be a brilliantly unpredictable pilot.
****
"What the hell was I thinking," Keiichi wondered as he jerked the controls aside again to hurl his AS in a machine and body punishing roll that the eight-foot frame wasn't quite designed to absorb.
"Actually," he decided. "I was thinking just fine. A little race, something to show off our designs. We're used to races. So what was Skuld thinking?"
"Wait...Skuld?" he thought before turning to the radio. "Skuld, what did you put on this thing?"
"What do you mean 'what did I put on this thing'?" Skuld asked, affronted. "Chihiro told me not to go off the plans. Megumi told me not to go off plans. YOU told me not to go off plans."
Hence why she was affronted.
"Yeah, so what did you put in anyway?" Keiichi asked.
There was silence over the radio broken by a background of several women talking to a fifteen year-old goddess.
"Erm, jump jets," Skuld said finally.
"Jump jets, like how?" Keiichi asked.
As he spoke, the AS's computers started pulling up a schematic of a typical piece of equipment built into the back of the torso.
He grimaced as he analyzed the simplified diagram.
Skuld's design was typically was very clever. Using the AS's power to turn a turbine and pull air at great speed and pressure through the top out the bottom.
The problem was that the design was also Skuld-typical in terms of power efficiency. It would just about drain the available power every time he used it, meaning that when he came down, he'd be a slug.
And there was the OTHER problem of Skuld-typical devices.
"Okay," he said. "I'm going to try it on ten percent thrust."
****
"Did that little AS just fly about fifteen meters straight up?" Sousuke's co-pilot asked.
"It appears so," Sousuke said. "Impressive."
****
Keiichi worked desperately at his cockpit controls to start to control his fall, hoping to have enough power to bring the machine to a gentle fall rather than a steel-snapping crash.
"Skuld! Where's the steering for these jets?" Keiichi asked over the radio.
****
"Umm, steering?" Skuld asked.
"Jump jets are short-term flight," Megumi said. "You did add maneuvering jets, didn't you?"
"Err," Skuld said, embarassed.
"All the brilliance of Edison and Tesla combined," Chihiro noted. "With the forethought of a monkey."
"Hey!" Skuld protested.
****
Grimacing, Keiichi directed his AS's torso a lot off and gave another short burst of air, sending him into the soft target of a Narashino balloon which cushioned him just long enough to give a more normal jump to the AS's shoulder and then further down to the ground.
He smirked as the balloon popped in his wake.
"Sorry, Sousuke," he said. "But we've got our own team here."
****
"Interesting," Sousuke said as he saw what he recognized as an accidental score for Keiichi.
Given what he knew about the man, the engineer would figure out what he had done soon enough.
But the successful kill wasn't all he noticed. The little AS was a little jerkier than had been at the start of the event. It was a symptom that Sousuke recognized from his own experiments in the programing of Arm Slave AIs.
The Scirocco had a memory leak.
That meant that it's reaction time would get more erratic as time went on, leaning toward an overall slow down.
Added to that, he was watching it over the course of the match and confirming that every time it did that unsteerable jump, that it came down almost as slow as a slug. The power limits of the Scirocco were telling yet again.
Unfortunately, he could see the structural flaws were also wearing thin.
"Okay, everybody avoid the Scirocco's area," Sousuke said. "Let's use it against the Red Dragon."
"That thing moves like a greased pig," the co-pilot said. "If it wants to engage us, it'll get to us."
"Affirmative," Sousuke said. "But I don't think that will be a problem."
Slowly, the Red Dragon was whittled down, lacking the command of its vaunted leader, and then there was just Narashino and a pest of flying miniature AS to deal with.
"Okay, now there's just the Scirocco," Sousuke said, smiling.
"Yeah, and it's a pain in the butt," the co-pilot noted. "Did civilians really build this thing?"
"Affirmative," Sousuke said. "But it has some definite weaknesses, aside from the fact that in a full battle with actual AS weaponry it would be easily outmatched. Key among those is that each of those jumps seems to use the bulk of its accumulated power. In the moments after it jumps, it is vulnerable."
****
Keiichi was surprised to have lasted this long as the Narashino units closed about him. He'd even been able to take out three balloons...though mostly by luck and accident.
He wasn't looking to keep up that trend.
In fact, he was more or less just playing keep away now and hoping for a draw.
A T96 lunged down at him and he pushed the jump jets to pull away from it, wincing as he heard the creaking of the frame about him. Gritting his teeth at the snail's crawl the depleted battery allowed him until his motion and ambient friction powered up the main device.
Which was why he'd been aiming his jumps away from positions with any other AS.
He hadn't realized someone was watching for one of those jumps yet.
Not until an AS seemingly appeared out of nowhere near his landing point and, before he could get up enough power to dodge away, his balloon was gone.
"And the winner is Narashino!" the announcers shouted.
Keiichi groaned in disappointment...until the scirocco's left arm fell off.
****
"Ah, we lost," Skuld whined. "That stupid Keiichi! I knew I should have been piloting it."
"We came in second, Skuld," Chihiro said. "Against teams of professionals, and we even have three 'kills' to our team name. That's not a loss given what we're working with."
"You realize," Megumi said. "You just invited defense contracts your way."
"Feh, I already quit a job working at making someone else's designs," Chihiro said. "At Whirlwind, we make stuff for people to enjoy. They want to see my designs, fine. But I'm sticking to my custom machines."
****
"Well, that was timely," Keiichi said outside the scirocco as he looked over where the joint had finally given out under all the stress.
"It is an impressive design," Sousuke said, wandering away from the celebration.
"You still beat it," Keiichi noted.
"I had an unfair advantage," Sousuke noted. "I asked you about its specifications before I knew I'd be a participant."
"That's true," Keiichi said. "Hey, what happened to the other team's captain?"
As Keiichi asked, Sanzenin ran by, clothes half torn as he was pursued by a very eager looking Mizuki.
"Get away from me girl!" Sanzenin shouted.
"Oh come on, we haven't finished playing GS yet!" the love-crazed blonde shouted. "Mr. GS pilot!!"