***
"If you're right about this," Sam said, voice tight with apprehension, "then we need to do something, Firefly."
"I have done something, Sam," I replied firmly. "A net is already in place. The movement is ready to move."
I could tell he was still hesitant. The weight of it sat on his face—like the weight of betrayal wrapped in too many familiar names.
"I want to see it for myself," he finally said. "Before I commit to anything. This is... world-changing, Firefly. These are people I've known my whole life."
"I know." I nodded. "And we're ready."
Taking a step back, I let my words seal the moment. "Just be careful. Don't let them suspect you know. And if you believe me—when it matters—stand with me. I'll owe you two favours if you do."
Sam didn't respond. Just nodded.
That was enough. I turned on my heel and ran—off to make the final preparations for the Empress's surprise during the ordainment.
The welcome ceremony had ended. The air above the colosseum shimmered with energy from the roaring crowds. Everything was set.
From my perch, I watched Minister Whalen sitting smugly in his high box, flanked by the Lord of his House and the other ministers loyal to him. They laughed, drank, and played their parts in the theatre of power.
Then, silence fell.
A voice rang out across the stadium, amplified beyond the clouds and across every screen in the system.
"Welcome, everyone." The Empress stood at her shielded podium atop the colosseum's highest tier—her voice alone capable of silencing a hundred thousand. "It is an honour to stand before you today. A great honour. To look upon the faces of those who turn the gears of our empire from within."
She raised her hand in a delicate wave. The crowd responded with thunder.
I stood in the shadows at the entrance into the arena, waiting for my signal. Just one moment more.
"Today," she declared, "I shall ordain the newest and bravest of our star pilots with their rightful titles and ranks. I vest in them power—power to protect this magnificent empire and all its people. But first..."
She took in a slow breath, letting the silence draw taut like a blade.
"Just as I did eight years ago, I will call upon two of our star pilots. And I ask you, my people... to witness with your own eyes the strength in whom you place your faith."
From the skies to the earth, the stadium held its breath.
"The war against Freiheit—the frontiersmen of the Greyrot Quadrant—was not a difficult decision. For I would sooner burn than sell you to soulless machines. I would not let us become what our ancestors fought so hard not to become. Slaves. Meat for monsters. Pieces in a system that devours."
The air was charged now. No one blinked.
"So today, I call upon the two knights who embody the heart and valour of our soldiers fighting in Greyrot!"
With a graceful swing of her arm, one of the colosseum's entrances erupted in fire.
"Star Pilot, Samuel Foster! Warrior of malice and new-born rider of the Dragon Knight, Draco!"
Sam emerged from the flames, gauntlets raised, dragging cheers out of the arena like thunder. At his side, Draco constructed himself from a red beetle into his monstrous form, tail cutting trenches in the sand with every step before picking Sam up from the floor and tossing him into the cockpit in the dragon knight's chest.
"And opposing him..." the Empress gestured once more. "Star Pilot, Firefly! Awakener of the Vanguard Sprite! Guardian of grace, and heart of the Fairy Knight, Andromeda!"
I stepped forward into sunlight, emerging to a tidal wave of applause. Andromeda unfurled from the silver beetle at my hip, his platinum and tungsten form rising behind me like a knight from some forgotten myth before light shimmered around me to teleport me into his cockpit.
Draco and Andromeda walked to the centre of the arena. The towering mech knight's passed each other with nothing more than a nod—then continued, finding their position within the arena.
Sam's voice came through my Andromeda's radio in the cockpit. "You sure you want to do this?"
"I'm sure," I said without hesitation, as multiple wires within the mech's cockpit sank into my arms and nape. "It's necessary—to protect the beauty of this galaxy."
Andromeda's emerald sword unsheathed from his shoulder. With a silent command, I split it into two blades. He lifted them without a word, his azure visor low and focused.
"Last time, you let me win," I said. "This time—I'll earn it."
"You'll try to." Sam chuckled. "I'm not injured from your bastard brother this time."
Draco slammed a fist into the sand, shaking the arena. [Be ready to get ripped apart, Andromeda!] the dragon knight bellowed, his steel maw stretching open to release a war horn that drowned the sky in sound.
The crowd went wild. Food and drinks being tossed into the air to match their vigour.
Andromeda responded in kind, scraping his twin blades together in a screech of steel and light, a sound like an angel's scream. His horn rang out—not as loud, but just as resolute.
"Only two rules," Empress Lucione called from her high perch. "No Constellation Drives. No killing your opponent." Then, with a knowing smile: "So, are you ready to prove yourselves?"
Draco and Andromeda both nodded with the steel heads. The crowd trembled in anticipation.
"Fight for me." The empress commanded.
The horn blew. A shimmering shield snapped over the colosseum, sealing the combatants in.
"Tear this place apart, Draco!" Sam roared, surging forward.
[COME ON!] Draco launched like a missile, his metal tail whipping wind and sand into spirals behind him.
I gripped the controls within Andromeda's cockpit, tubes pumping blood and sucking the bio-electricity from me, but my heart steady.
"Let's make this look good, Andy."
[Copy, Firefly.]
Burning with determination, Andromeda surged forward, his thrusters flaring as he crashed into Draco with meteoric force. Sparks exploded as emerald swords clashed against jagged bone machetes, and the sound alone sent a shockwave rippling through the arena.
The stadium held its breath, silenced by impact—then erupted into deafening cheers, split between two legends. The fairy knight, and the dragon knight.
Skating on air with fluid grace, Andromeda kicked Draco back and darted around him in a wide arc. His thrusters kept him gliding like a ghost on ice, positioning for a precise strike. Twisting to Draco's flank, Andromeda swung both blades down in a blur—but they barely scratched the dragon knight's hide, only carving a red arc of glowing heat along his reinforced armour.
[Thanks for the boost!] Draco grinned, driving a devastating fist into Andromeda's guard. The impact hurled the knight backwards like a ragdoll, sending him crashing into the arena wall in a cloud of cracked stone and sand.
Emerging from the rubble, Andromeda reanalysed. Draco's armour had only taken cosmetic damage—the heat from earlier strikes had been absorbed, dissipating as glowing veins across his limbs before vanishing entirely.
[Strategy re-optimization complete. Adjusting weaponry.]
Slotting the two blades together, Andromeda breathed a shimmer of cold up the weapon's shaft. Then, in a burst of heat and fire, he swung it at Draco's ribs. The blade connected—and this time, Draco's wrist-machete froze on contact and snapped clean in two before the heavy sword batted him down into the ground with a brutal thud.
[The same damned tricks!] Draco roared, launching up from the crater he'd made.
Steel clashed. Sparks rained like meteors.
The two knights collided again and again—each blow more desperate, more deliberate. Draco's feedback armour collected every bit of damage and turned it into retaliatory shockwaves, releasing bursts of kinetic force that battered Andromeda and even tore open parts of the colosseum.
Andromeda responded with elegance and calculation—cooling Draco's limbs with pinpoint frost strikes, slowing him just enough to dodge, then using heat bursts to amplify counterattacks. He bristled his armour for impact strikes and timed everything to precision, trying to drop Draco in a single sweeping blow.
[Ragh—!] A vicious crack as Andromeda's sword smashed into Draco's jaw, sending the dragon knight staggering. He caught himself with his tail, then whipped it around like a spiked club, striking Andromeda hard across the ribs.
Grabbing the tail mid-swing, Andromeda let a brilliant teal glow shine through the fractures of his plating. He lifted Draco with a burst of powered strength, spun him overhead, and hurled him skyward—before unleashing a purging storm of fire straight into the sky.
[That won't work like last time!]
Draco plummeted from the flames and smashed his fist into the arena floor where Andromeda had stood moments earlier. The ground shattered. The arena was no longer flat—a jagged, mountainous terrain now spread across the battlefield like a broken planet.
Flying up, Andromeda and I scanned the new battlefield—then acted.
Pulling out his thermic railgun, Andromeda dove back down, using the terrain to his advantage. He vanished between the ridges and outcrops, firing precise freezing shots in rapid succession, peppering Draco from the shadows like a ghost sniper.
Draco shielded his vitals with his arms, stomping forward, bellowing as the rocks and cliffs slowed his pursuit.
[Ragh!!] He smashed through stone and sand, chasing—only for Andromeda to blink behind and slash a deep gouge into his rear armour.
Draco jumped, slammed, spun, but couldn't get a clean strike. Andromeda skated like a phantom between obstacles, until—
Draco predicted his path.
His machete slashed clean through Andromeda's leg as the fairy knight rounded a pillar. The blow sent him tumbling through half a dozen jagged spires before crashing down in a heap.
Draco pounced.
Both wrist-blades came down in a brutal arc—but Andromeda caught them on his sword at the last possible second, locking the blades inches from his visor.
[You seem distracted, Andromeda. Don't you dare ignore me!]
Retracting his machetes, Draco threw a brutal punch into the emerald sword, striking again and again until it wrenched free from Andromeda's fingers and went flying.
[Now, your—]
A searing blast of heat burst from Andromeda's wrists, blinding Draco. Taking his chance, Andromeda jetted away, vanishing up the slope just before Draco stomped again—shattering the arena floor further and plunging himself into a crater ten feet lower than where the fight began.
The battlefield was unrecognizable. Shattered stone. Dust storms. Sparks and boiling tension.
Neither knight showed signs of stopping.
Glaring upward from the crater, Draco spotted Andromeda hovering like a spectre of judgment—thrusters burning bright, railgun gripped in both hands. The cannon hummed with concentrated power, charging the final tenth of its elemental ammunition into a single, devastating shot. Below, steam hissed from Draco's vents, his feedback armour straining at the seams, nearly maxed out from the relentless back-and-forth.
The crowd could feel it. The end was closing in.
The two titans—each twenty feet tall, battered and scorched—stood at the brink. Their armour was cracked to its limit, the fight approaching the outer edge of what was safe in a sanctioned duel. One final blow. That was all it would take.
"Go Andromeda!"
"Crush that mosquito, Draco!"
"Rip him apart!"
"Woooo!!!"
I pushed Andromeda forward with everything I had, accelerating him into a spiralling dive straight for Draco. He twisted mid-air and drove a brutal kick into Draco's face, sending the dragon knight's head slamming into the crater floor—but Draco recovered fast. Too fast.
In a blink, he latched onto Andromeda's leg and yanked him downward, slamming the knight into the arena with a thunderous impact that cracked stone. But Andromeda's thrusters roared back to life. He didn't stop. He dragged Draco with him as he launched into the sky, metal grinding on metal as the two collided mid-air.
They clashed brutally while airborne—slamming fists, throwing knees, jostling for control as the arena vanished beneath them. The crowd gasped as the knights slammed into the energy shield separating them from the stands, causing ripples of kinetic distortion to dance across its glowing dome. Draco's body scraped violently along the barrier as Andromeda ascended—higher and higher—until we reached the stadium's very peak.
We were now eye level with the Empress.
"Do it now, Andy!" I yelled.
Obeying, Andromeda extended his railgun—but didn't point it at Draco. Instead, the barrel pivoted away, locking onto the crowd. A murmur of panic began to rise. The air shifted.
The railgun began to glow—a pale, blinding white—condensing all its energy into a single point aimed not at the Empress's gallery, but just below it.
Minister Whalen's.
In the nobles' box, Whalen stood with elation turning to horror. "...What?"
[Checkmate.]
The trigger released.
A column of energy blasted out with icy fury, bypassing the arena shield like it didn't exist. The beam struck Whalen's chest dead-on and detonated—freezing the entire box in an instant, leaving behind a sculpted monument of frost and silence.
A wave of frost swept outward, flash-freezing the upper colosseum in ghostly white, catching Draco in mid-motion and locking him in a frozen stance.
"The plan worked, right?" Sam asked over the comms, his voice tinged with disbelief as Draco strained and finally shattered the ice encasing him.
[It had to. There's no way anything could a' survived that.] Draco answered, shaking the ice off his shoulders like snowflakes.
The arena fell into chaos.
Screams tore through the crowd as Andromeda landed back on the shattered, frost-covered battlefield. Draco dropped beside him, steam still hissing from his vents. Thousands stood frozen in shock, staring at the now-glacial ruin that was once Minister Whalen's grand seating box.
"A-Andromeda just attacked the ministers!"
"Is this still part of the duel?"
"What's going on?!"
Panic flared—until a calm voice cut through the storm.
Standing tall in her private gallery, her cloak fluttering against the cold wind, Empress Lucione stepped forward. She raised her voice—not in alarm, but with the measured authority only she could wield.
"My people, do not fear."
Silence.
"Last night, Andromeda's pilot uncovered an evil plot. Minister Whalen and his co-conspirators intended to assassinate me here, during this very ceremony. They tried to turn her—our dear Firefly—to their side. They sought to take her will. To erase her. But she burned away their corruption with truth. She came to me. She chose this empire."
The stadium turned back toward the frozen landscape—then to the kneeling figure of Andromeda, lowering his weapon and bowing toward the Empress.
"I serve this beautiful empire," I said through the speakers, clear and unwavering. "Not Freiheit's twisted ideals of heroism."
And for a moment, it seemed resolved.
But then—a static shriek hijacked the stadium's speakers, warping into a mechanical screech that sent feedback screaming through the air. From the shattered remains of the minister's box, a figure emerged—dragging itself from the icy wreckage like a monster reborn.
Half-mechanical. Half-rotten flesh. All wrong.
Sunlight gleamed off exposed steel organs and twitching servos embedded in muscle and bone.
Minister Whalen stood exposed in the open air, something unholy keeping him upright.
"So you weren't convinced after all," he rasped, his voice echoing across the stadium with a layered distortion that wasn't fully human anymore. "How disappointing, dear sister."