9 - Bewilderment x Assault

[Glawis! Stop your machine, emergency evacuation, now! Get out of there!]

“Huh?!” Regina cried.

Even Regina couldn’t hide her surprise at the sudden communication.

When she looked back to see if something had happened, I could see the bulkhead closing.

[Get the hell out of there! This is an emergency!]

Regina doesn’t know what happened that Instructor Aloe would be so panicked and desperate, but she decided that it would be better to obey.

“…… Roger that,” Regina said. “Evacu–! ?”

[Glawis!?] Aloe yelled.

And just as she was about to disembark, Regina heard a warning sound. In her HUD, there was a flashing red arrow on her right side, warning of an incoming threat from there.

The impact came simultaneously.

A shock-absorbing mechanism is wrapped around the matrix, and it is also installed in the pilot suit.

The impact that came was insignificant, but Regina’s reaction to the surprise was delayed.

Her unit stalls and falls to the ground with a roar.

There were supposed to be automated controls to prevent falls, but Regina turned out to have sabotaged herself by disabling all of them.

“──What the hell was that!?” Regina yelled.

As she swung her unit’s external camera around, she found Centurias hovering towards her with rifles at the ready.

“!?”

An alarm.

They’ve locked on.

Regina operates on reflex, firing her thrusters at full throttle.

After a moment of stalling, the machine skids on the ground, but the fired beams still hit.

Regina looks at the mini status figure in the center of her console, the right arm was yellow, the left arm was yellow, and the left arm was black.

Yellow means that it has been hit and its function is degraded, and black means that it has stopped functioning completely.

“──!”

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Yet more shots were fired.

She was confused and didn’t know what was going on.

Above all else, the fear of death drove Regina.

She moves in a wide arc while dragging her machine against the ground.

She didn’t intend to. She had stomped on the foot pedal to escape, and because she was leaning back in her seat, her dominant arm jerked hard on the lever on that side.

But it worked.

With the thrusters firing, the Centuria’s took longer to lock on Regina’s machine, and the dust rolling up blinded them even further.

[Fuuuuucckkk….! Don’t you fucking run away from me, Regina…!]

Regina came to her senses at the roar coming over the communicator.

“That voice…”

[It’s me, Regina Glawis.]

Regina was so shocked her body lost strength, and her foot on the pedal pulled away from it.

The thrusters stopped, and the unit came to a grinding halt.

“Iniuria…” Regina whispered.

As if in response, a video comm-window opened, showing Iniuria baring her teeth and laughing.

“You! What are you doing!?” Regina screamed.

[Huuh?!] Iniuria snarled. [Haven’t you already figured it out? I’m going to kill you, you bitch…! ]

She’s insane!

Regina fired the thrusters again and made her unit slide sideways.

A beam hits it, causing an explosion.

[That’s what I’m talking about! That was no fun, yeah?! You guys! Get out there and hunt her down!] Iniuria yells.

At that, her minions all fired their thrusters at once and started chasing Regina’s unit.

The three machines form an inverted triangle and ready their rifles.

Every time the rifles’ lasers hits Regina’s unit, a warning sound echoes in the matrix, chipping away at Regina’s spirit

“~~~~~~~~!”

With a wordless groan, she desperately controlled her unit to move in a zigzag.

Shooting in a Stella Corpus is mostly automatic. Even in the military, only a handful of elites do something like manually aiming at targets.

To complete the auto-acquisition, you must keep the target in your sights for several seconds.

Zigzagging in this way reduces the risk of being caught and increases her chances of survival.

It’s a textbook move.

However, it’s not like you can’t shoot a beam rifle—or rather, any firearm without locking on first.

So long as you pull the trigger, it will fire.

[Come on, come ooonnn!] Iniuria yells. [What’s the matter with you!? You going to just keep running away from me, Ms. Straight-A Student?!]

Explosions erupt all around the machine.

The four rifles’ accelerated particle blasts strike Regina like a horizontal rainstorm.

“Don’t be stupid! Why are you doing this to me?! What the hell?!” Regina yelled.

[Huh!? I can’t hear yoouuu!] Iniuria mocks.

The video-comm was still displayed.

From being overwhelmed by panic and confusion, that infuriating expression so fueled by violence and mockery cooled Regina’s head.

(I’m going to kill her. Only this once,) Regina thought.

Having regained her composure, she finally regained the sense to look around and check her surroundings.

She has a map of the training ground burned into her head.

She compares her current location with the 3D map in her head.

She grasps the status of her unit.

And she remembers the techniques that she has honed.

“!”

From the zigzag movement, she slides sideways and away at once.

The thrusters are fully open.

[I told you not to run away!] Iniuria roared.

All four of them chased after Regina, probably because they were annoyed by how far away she was getting.

(Yes. Come here,) Regina thought.

She has trained for actual combat.

Regina always chose the highest degree of difficulty for the simulator, set restrictions so that she could handle various hypothetical situations, and trained herself as much as time allowed.

So it is with this situation, as well.

She’s unarmed. Enemy units are armed.

In the simulator, her unit is at a greater disadvantage, and Regina has even cleared a program where the enemy units are equipped with missiles and much more powerful weapons.

“That’s why… I can do it!” Regina cried.

[Going to beg for your life, huh!?] Iniuria snapped.

“Don’t you mock me…!” Regina screams.

She suddenly reverses her machine. G-Forces that even the shock-absorbing systems cannot handle hit Regina, but she braced herself through willpower.

The thrusters suddenly fire again, and Regina closes in on Iniuria’s machine at once.

[!?]

Because they were both accelerating, Iniuria reached Regina earlier than she expected, and even though she was already locked on, she was surprised and too late to pull the trigger.

Regina’s machine sinks slightly, bracing for a jump.

(At once, just like this──) Regina thought.

In Regina’s head, she clearly imagined the scene of a flying kick landing the moment they intersected, and her disabling Iniuria’s unit at once.

However:

[Don’t forget us!]]

“Zuh!?” Regina gasped.

A beam exploded on her chest armor, the impact causes Regina’s unit to jerk back at once.