Nervousness, excitement, dread, fear. It was a mix of all these things that had Elytra waking up before the customary chime from her display roused her from sleep.
"Good morning, contestant!" Came again the blandly pleasant voice of the yellow and black baithaizan. One way or another, Elytra was going to make sure that she never heard them again. "Today marks the final round of eliminations. One of you will be lucky enough to win the chance to become our new champion. We look forward to your victory."
Elytra could just bet.
She went through the motions of her monotonous morning routine, changed into her issued uniform, before being led out of her featureless cell. As she was brought along through the starkly empty corridors to the cavernous brutalism of the feeding area, she decided that she was going to do whatever she could to fill her life with as much colour as possible once she was free of this mess.
Across the room, at the table she'd been assigned from day one, Pryseia was just taking her seat. Only two guards had been assigned to the room to watch them, but that was still two too many for any kind of conversation, so Elytra just nodded to her friend before digging into the nothing of a meal before her.
And though Pryseia nodded back with a placidly neutral expression on her face, Elytra could feel her giddiness like mist off churning water.
Thankfully meal time went by much quicker, since they didn't need to wait for everyone else to finish, and so it wasn't long before the two of them were being led down to the hangar bays. Unlike before, they were accompanied by the guards from the feeding room. Pryseia's annoyance prickled like frost at her back at this unexpected escort, though underneath it Elytra could feel just the faintest burbling of anxiousness. And that was worrying.
Mercifully, the guards peeled away once they neared the hall that led directly to the hangar bays, and just before they were pulled their separate ways, Pryseia whispered, "Storlayacas stops control."
Elytra had no idea what that meant, but Pryseia's anxiety vanished the moment she got the message out, so it had to mean something. She just hoped she could figure out what in time.
Her collar led her off to a green mech again, and soon enough it was brought to the closed door of the loading bay. Beyond it, she could hear the crowd chanting over the noise of the announcer. It was a sound she would be glad to be rid of.
One last time, the blast of the announcer's horn rang through the arena, and Elytra charged out onto the field.
Across from her, Pryseia was doing the same, zigging and zagging while she took pot shots as she drew near. Elytra followed her lead, closing distance and firing away. Pryseia's giddiness was positively effervescent, even at this distance.
As soon as they were within melee distance with one another, Pryseia tossed her gun away rather than stow it on her machine as the training sims had insisted was proper form, drawing her sabre with a flourish showier than anything any of the other competitors had managed. Elytra hadn't thought that these machines could even move like that.
And then Pryseia showed just how skilled behind the controls of a mech she really was.
Through the observation skills the other woman had been having her hone, Elytra could read the movements of the mech in purple as if Pryseia was shouting choreography at her. A feint with the sabre had Elytra's mech charging forward, pulled and pivoted by Pryseia so it looked like Elytra's mech had pressed the advantage, especially when Pryseia faked a stumble backwards. Elytra's own actual charge and strike, amateurish by comparison, were elevated when Pryseia overcharged her shields, which caused them to spark alarmingly. As focused on the fight as she was, Elytra could still see the crowds in the stands writing more frantically at that little display.
To their untrained eye, they no doubt thought that the pilot of the green mech was the better fighter, but on the opposite end of Pryseia's careful maneuvering, Elytra knew that was far from the case. This wasn't a battle, it was a dance.
One they needed to bring to an end.
Elytra lashed out with a swipe at the middle of Pryseia's mech, and as she had in her previous match, Pryseia guided the blade so it would swipe against the area she'd indicated to disable it. She threw her shields up, purposefully a moment too slow, and the blade left behind a molten slash of superheated metal in its wake - a target for where to deliver the finishing blow.
Not allowing herself a chance to throw off her aim with second guessing, Elytra lunged, the point of her blade driving through the core of Pryseia's mech.
Panic lanced through Elytra when she felt a frigid jolt of shock coming from Pryseia, but this was quickly overridden by exultant elation as blinding as a winter dawn. As Pryseia made her machine stumble dramatically backwards before falling lifeless to the arena floor, Elytra could have sobbed with relief.
Pryseia was alive, and soon they'd be getting out of there.
As Pryseia had told her would happen, the second Elytra had climbed out of her mech after being directed to square it away in the landing bay, her collar had her off down a hallway she'd never been in before. Guards accompanied her once again, along with two helmetless baithaizans dressed in what she could only assume were officer uniforms.
"This one had quite a showing," the one on the left was saying to their companion, "Here's hoping the Odazaen responds well to that."
"Regardless, it'll make a fine addition to our forces," the other officer said, talking about her as if she wasn't even a person, "The last pilot too. Once we get it out of that mech, we can have it shipped off to Garnotii."
"If it still lives. That was a killing blow if ever I saw one. Practically welded the hatch shut, the mechanics are having a time of it."
Elytra could feel Pryseia's amusement burbling even from here. She allowed the knowledge that her friend was alive to soothe some of the irritation the baithaizan's treatment of her was stirring.
"No matter, we still had a bumper crop of talent harvested from this go around. Even if this one does get the Odazaen to work, I'm going to suggest that we keep the tournaments running."
"You'll be hard pressed to convince them. The masses like the promise of a winner getting a prize. Can't have the allure of that if the prize is already won."
The baithaizan made a glottal sound that Elytra supposed was a laugh before saying, "Who's to say we tell the masses that the prize has been won, even if it is? We've taken footage enough of that thing to have as many playback loops as we'll ever need!"
Elytra couldn't even pretend to be shocked by that.
One elevator ride later, and their little group stood on a walkway before the prize of this tournament - the Odazaen. While the officers traded elaborate bows with the handful of military personnel who had been waiting there for them, Elytra took the opportunity to get a better look at the mech that Pryseia claimed would accept her as its pilot.
This close to it… the scale of the thing was massive, far larger than the footage she'd seen of it had led her to believe. It was bipedal like the T0-K4Y units she'd used during the course of the tournament, and that was where the similarities ended. This machine could hold a baithaizan mech in one of its hands.
Rather than the blocky, machined superstructure of a T0-K4Y, the Odazaen was all clean, smooth curves. The armour plating almost had an organic look to it, but even from here, Elytra could see it was made of some type of metal. Some type of flexible covering masked the joints that she could see on this thing from her vantage, almost resembling muscle. The cockpit of the mech was left open, and with the systems of this thing shut down, the only thing Elytra could make out inside of it was a chair far simpler than the one within a T0-K4Y. She couldn't see anything that even remotely resembled a control system.
"Daylight fades," one of the officer baithaizans said in her general direction, breaking Elytra from her reverie, "Let's see if the harvest was worth the hunt."
Once more, the collar around Elytra's neck led her forward, and she followed it into the cockpit of the Odazaen. She climbed into the seat, half expecting one of the officers to start barking orders at her, but instead, she felt a vibration go through the machine beneath her.
And that must have not been expected, judging from the shocked expressions that overtook the baithaizan's faces.
Before anyone gathered could react, the Odazaen stood back, the cockpit slamming closed at the same time restraints snapped down around Elytra's body. Fear had her struggling to break free, especially as something in the dark of the cockpit was lowered over her head, but in the next instant-
The words echoed through her mind like a peal of thunder, rattling her down to her DNA with the sheer force of it. Elytra had never felt anything so profound in her life.
She blinked, the darkness of the cockpit fading away, and with it came the dizzying swoop of vertigo from looking down at something from on high. Below her, far far below her, the military baithaizans were shouting on the walkway she'd just stepped off of. She was seeing the world through this mech's - not an Odazean, a Storlayacas - sensor array as if it were her own eyes. Instinctively, she brought up the HUD for her systems, zooming in and boosting the audio pickup. The officers were frantically screaming orders at her, one of them furiously mashing away at a device in one of their hands. Her collar didn't so much as even twitch.
Storlayacas stops control. This is what Pryseia had meant.
At the thought of her friend, Elytra reached out with her senses for the other woman. Shockingly, the Storlayacas turned as well, bringing up a simple map on her HUD, a blip that she knew was Pryseia back in the arena where she'd left her.
Thrusters activated before Elytra could consciously make the decision, her hand going for the weapon she knew was in a compartment on her Storlayacas' side. The sabre roared to life a moment later, and Elytra used it to cleave through the flooring separating her from Pryseia.
She burst out into the arena in no time at all, the stands half empty now that the spectacle was over. Dragged halfway into the loading bay was Pryseia's damaged mech, swarmed with technicians trying to laser it open. At the sight of the Storlayacas bursting through the ground, the technicians scattered.
Crouching down, Elytra was thrilled to find that the Storlayacas was far more dexterous than the T0-K4Y could ever hope to be. As easily as peeling the rind off a fruit, she was able to pull back the damaged hatch of the mech, revealing a grinning Pryseia within.
"Grant me entry, for we need to make our exit!" She shouted up at her, the Storlayacas zooming in on her without Elytra even needing to think of doing so. Giving her a hand to climb into, Elytra lifted it to her chest where she knew her cockpit to be, and with the strange sensation of two places at once, she felt Pryseia both inside and beside her.
She felt a hand on her head, then, and a voice in her ear commanding the Storlayacas' communication system. "Pelekys come in, I need a path cleared."
"Confirmed," someone answered, and her systems drew her eyes up to the dome where the announcer was frantically trying to bring some type of order back into play, "I take it your mission was a success?"
"Doubly so," Pryseia said with a laugh, "I'm bringing back a friend!"
Elytra felt the communication channel close, and a moment later, the dome of the arena shattered under weapons fire.
Past the falling rubble, the shattered image of the announcer and the violet blasts that tore the arena to ruin, a ship was descending. Black as deep space, the lines of it almost made it impossible to keep ones eyes upon it.
"Thus we shall be delivered to freedom," Pryseia said beside her, clapping a hand on her shoulder, "Fly us in range and they'll demat us aboard."
Thinking was as good as doing in the Storlayacas, and Elytra had them leaping, thrusters flaring before Pryseia's words had a chance to taper away.
Elytra had no idea what awaited her in that dark ship, but she knew it would be better than the stark white hell she'd been held captive in for the past handful of weeks. At the very least, she knew she would have one friend to walk beside her for whatever came next, and that had her more hopeful for the future than she'd been in a long, long time.