Palioxis vs Fate, a duel of epic proportions... Provided you ignored their height anyway. The fight between these two started with both of them puffing up their chests and sneering at one another. This was a standard greeting between brats when asserting dominance in the wild. Although most people know to ignore such bluffs, bratty types such as these two were completely unaware. The irony of gesturing for pretence'' sake but being blissfully unaware that was also precisely what their opponent was doing was not lost on the crowd who found this all very cute. No matter how much bravado and gall these two outwardly presented themselves as possessing, it was impossible for any onlookers to fall for the ruse because, from the perspective of an adult, it was kind of adorable. It was an act that lacked any real bite or substantial threat and was like being growled at by a plushie for the sensible spectators. To each other, however, the snarling and derision in their foe''s face was akin to that of a ferocious animal and thus began the war to determine who was superior amongst the mini menaces.


    Fate flipped her palm so that it was facing the sky as she brought a blue cube, segmented into nine separate squares on each face, out from her spatial ring. It hovered above her hand and glitched in and out of existence, looking prone to just vanishing entirely should Fate leave it to its own devices for long enough. No such thing would actually happen though as the truth of the matter was far more complicated. It wasn''t disappearing, at least not physically anyway. This cube possessed optical camouflage technology and could blend in with its background seamlessly like a chameleon.


    In response to Fate playing her hand, Palioxis decided to reveal the ace up her sleeve too. Instead of a single upturned palm, both of Palioxis'' hands were made to face the heavens. And, of course, instead of a single object appearing in her hand, two chunky, spherical devices rolled around in them after being dragged out from her spatial ring. Both were pure white with the only visible difference between the two being the shape of a golden engraving embedded into the spheres. One of these symbols was that of a shield and scythe whereas the other depicted two crossed scythes, forgoing the shield.


    With her Scytheguards ready to roll out, Palioxis felt comfortable and deployed a smug face towards her opponent. Feeling equally as confident with her H.I.JACK ready to manifest, Fate returned fire with a cocky grin. Though tensions were high between the two, all everyone else saw were two smiling children in dresses playing around with their marbles. This was a stark contrast to Venus who was nearby and had debatably lost hers.


    Fate''s cube sunk into her palm and she clenched her hand into a fist, causing a bright blue shine to radiate from her knuckles. A hologram generated in front of the blue light, gradually forming her puppet out of thin air. A light blue mist, surrounded by a dark blue cloak patterned like a motherboard, made up the main body of the entity fate was summoning and small streams of data were passing through it at regular intervals. The rest of the cloak was eventually finished and, despite not having a physical body below the neck, the cloak had distinct shaping around the shoulder area as well as flared collars near the top. In between those flared collars rested a pure-white jabot atop the floating mist, above which was a shiny, compact, black plague mask with small gas filters on the sides and blue LED lighting in the eye sockets. Covering the majority of the top half of the mask was a rather stark and tall top hat with a ''V'' shaped rim.


    This technological marvel, H.I.JACK, was a techy treasure with a number of functions that aided in covert operations and possessed decent assassination capabilities. It''s two primary features were its cloaking ability and the two flexible arm slots attached to the inside of the cloak. As if to show off the latter of which, H.I.JACK inched forward and two thick metal beams dropped down a few inches from under the shoulder area of the cloak with a kathunk noise. The one on the left was temporarily bare at the furthest end but a whirring sound accompanied the arrival of a spinning claw from within the hollow beam. It slid out, clicked into place near what could be considered the metal beam''s ''wrist'', and the drill shaped claw gradually unfurled to show of its true form. It was large and sharp, yes, but more than anything it very clearly had a ton of grip strength with its rigid fingers and was perfect for a more brute force first approach. The other metal beam sported a different weapon, a series of chains funnelling through and out the metal beam. These chains wrapped up and around the beam as well as the light blue mist with the ends of them floating around H.I.JACK like airborne snakes waiting to viciously strike their prey. These two weapons weren''t the only ones available to H.I.JACK but it must have decided this was the best weapon set to start things off with against Palioxis. Unlike Pali''s treasure, H.I.JACK had considerable intelligence and could even function independently of Fate to an impressive degree should it need to. This was especially useful in espionage situations whereby Fate could leave H.I.JACK to hack a computer while she cloaked herself and went off to scout. They formed a formidable duo in terms of efficiency and stealthy prowess but H.I.JACK also sported some serious combat potential. As far as puppets went, H.I.JACK was top notch and Fate was incredibly lucky to have it. Her own passive magic, that put her in bad situations but typically had everything end with good results, had originally led to her discovery of this treasure and she''d been glued to it ever since. Fate ran through treasures like a chain smoker going through cigarettes and frequently changed the loadout she wore based on a number of different factors but, throughout it all, she always kept her trusty H.I.JACK by her side. They''d been through thick and thin and Fate''s life had been saved by it on numerous occasions so Calla even treated it like family. Its sentience was limited but that didn''t stop Calla from showering it with affection for protecting her baby during rough patches.


    Then there was Palioxis'' puppets. Rather than sink into her palm, the two spheres simply rolled off her hands and fell towards the floor. The spectators half-expected the spheres to maybe bounce once or twice because, realistically, if Pali had been holding them they probably weren''t altogether too heavy and, yet...


    THUD!


    THUD!


    Two small craters were created from the impact as the spheres lodged themselves into the cracked arena floor. Clearly these things weighed more than Palioxis was letting on but whether she hadn''t strained to hold them because they were her personal treasures, or because her petite body packed some seriously herculean strength, nobody knew. In truth it was actually somewhat of a mix between both as the personal treasure aspect of things did reduce their weight considerably but that didn''t mean they weren''t still cumbersome to the average individual. Palioxis may have been small in stature but she was not skipping her daily muscle training that was for sure. All of the Legion members were put on a training regime from a young age and most of them stuck with it for life which was why it was nigh impossible to find a Legion member that was physically weak. Bellona the humanoid gorilla / ram was a perfect example of this.


    Back to the balls. The two treasures opened up slightly near the mid section, letting out a torrent of steam and an oddly satisfying noise to boot; one like that of a steam locomotive chugging along. These treasures had actually been procured from Neo Gear Land, a place where steam trains were abundant, so this wasn''t particularly surprising. In fact, according to Pali, these treasures were forged from the decrepit chassis of such trains as well as two run down statues of gear folk that had their own legend attached to them. Two female robos who were famous for their passionate dance duet performances before being forced to take up weapons to defend their homeland during an invasion. This was back during a time where war wasn''t something that happened within the walls of Neo Gear Land but rather outside the city, a time when both gear folk and neo droids actually got along. Not perfectly, mind you, but better than they did now at least. When the war was said and done, and the various deeds of the dancing robos were recorded in full, statues were built in their memory to honour the deceased.


    These statues were evidently built in the wrong neighbourhoods, however, as they couldn''t be protected later down the line when tensions started building between the two robo races. The desecrating of these two statues became as infamous as the lovers were famous during the peak of their renown. These celebrities were no long celebrated and, instead, their existences as a whole were taken wildly out of context. As they were built in a predominantly neo droid populated area, some saw the imposing gear folk as a symbol of oppression and what happened next needn''t be elaborated on as the end result speaks for itself. Two once-iconic statues buried deep in a graveyard of junk within an out-of-use railway scrap yard at the very edge of the city, spray painted in parts with chunks of marbling missing in others.


    At the very least, the real corpses of these two individuals were kept safe in a museum and, although it might have sounded like a grim fate, it was actually considered an honour for robos to be displayed after death instead of being dismantled and reused elsewhere... Of course this would be short lived for the dead gear folk dancer couple, as the current state of Neo Gear''s political climate was atrocious and their corpses would soon mysteriously vanish. Where they would go was anyone''s guess but it wasn''t a good sign if you were someone who hoped tensions would just die down already. The harsh truth of the matter is that both sides of the political spectrum in Neo Gear were brewing up all sorts of monsters and that was reflected in strange happenings across the entire country. Power outages causing hallucinations at night, disappearing dancers during the day. Electric whispers buzzing in your ears like that of a foul omen at night, rumblings under the floor and vanishing citizens during the day. Pre-emptive warnings of assassinations etched into concrete walls in empty buildings at night, the sensation of invisible hands rummaging over your body in the half pipes filled with oil for transport during the day. Three major rumours for each of the two sides that had rather unpleasant implications the further you dug into each of them... Not that you''d live for very long after investigating further anyway. Nosy robos became disappearing robos more often than not and the few that weren''t dead knew that, should they ever open their mouth, they would be buried six feet under sooner rather than later. Scrap that, being buried was a pleasant fate compared to what some of these unknown monstrosities could do to you. And the worst part was that neither of these six manmade disasters were the grand finale of either side, they were just the warmup to a culmination of hatred and violence that would rock the country as a whole.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    That was getting ahead of things and, right now, the two dancers were nothing more than treasures crafted in the image of the real deal. Not that anyone could tell yet though as the balls were still letting out all the pent up steam within them. This served as an indicator the charging function had been working. Unlike H.I.JACK, the Scytheguards needed time to refill their tanks between uses and it was unfortunate but necessary. The power they packed in turn, however, was quite spectacular... The balls expanded further and flipped open like a cracked egg. The two halves split again, and again, and again, but mysteriously the spheres were somehow getting bigger. It was as though the spheres were defying logic and, every time they split, their overall mass was increasing rather than remaining the same and spreading out. Spatial magic was actually at play here but it was so subtle one could hardly tell without close inspection. Anyway, that aside, the unfolding process became more and more rapid with every split until, eventually, two robotic dancers were being crafted before everyone''s eyes at Mach speed. Deploying them took some time but not as much as you might think considering the process essentially built them from scratch like some kind of kid''s toy.


    As for what the completed dancers looked like, they were unusual in that they were constructed somewhat differently compared to a typical gear folk. The obvious difference, that could be seen with nothing more than a quick glance, was that their legs were non-existent. Rather those parts had been replaced by a black, flowy, metal, crinoline petticoat with silent jet boosters in them that allowed the Scytheguards to hover about a foot or two off the floor. Again, back during the time period in which they were alive, neo droids and gear folk actually got along. They worked together to improve one another in a fashion that was similar to that of scraps but done to a much more professional degree. The modifications here were solid proof that if the two sides simply stopped bickering they could make technological marvels but, alas, they''d regressed instead of progressed due to their unending rivalry. Even the flowy metal, which couldn''t be found anywhere else in any other domain within the Primordial barrier, was yet more proof that the two sides should really just kiss and make up for the sake of the robos suffering within the country. They could be a world power but they were too busy discretely murdering each other in heinous ways, and pointlessly aggravating each other, to get anywhere on such matters. What a shame.


    As for the rest of the Scytheguards'' design, above the waist their bodies became drastically thinner with only a single large pipe substituting everything that a stomach region usually entails. Their chests and up returned back to a normal, wide structure and their arms were covered with long and stylish gauntlets. The overarching colour scheme for these Scytheguards was a pure white mixed with brownish golds that were typical of a gear folk with money to spend on polishing and improving their colours a little. This gave their upper half a regal and elegant aura which contrasted with the darkness of their petticoats, leading to a feeling that they were a meticulously designed blend of death and beauty. Like a painting of a grieving widow. The heads of the dancers rounded off that feeling of graceful solemnity as the bottom halves of their faces were smooth and curved whereas the top half was cut off by medieval helmets styled into the shape of a visor with no holes for vision. A small veil was fitted to the back of these helmets but, other than that, they were plain as can be.


    The two dancers gave a strong sense of ghostly and ephemeral attraction that was bolstered by their synchronous and smooth movements. Their hovering wasn''t stationary or directional, it was more free flowing and unpredictable. Their movements resembled fish in water or jets performing tricks in the air. They were more fluid than solid but that didn''t mean they came across as soft or weak, instead it was a display of technique and precision that subtly boasted about the unmatched skill they possessed be it as dancers or warriors. The weapons they wielded were precisely as shown on the spheres earlier with one wielding a shield in one hand and a scythe in the other, with the second Scytheguards wielding two scythes and no defensive options. All the weapons had a small gear clock embedded directly in the centre of them, ticking away, and the colours of the weapons matched with the dancers to make them appear as extensions of their frames rather than as separate entities. The guard with the shield was great at defending whereas the double scythe puppet could aggressively stay on the offensive without needing to task itself with defending the master leading to a solid game plan in any fight that covered all bases. Their autonomy was limited though so Palioxis had to do most of the heavy lifting regardless. Controlling two puppets at the same time was hard work and just went to show how incredible Palioxis was. Who knew you could pack so much brilliance inside one little prodigy?


    With both sides having thrown out their puppets it was time for them to clash... But H.I.JACK had disappeared already, leaving the Scytheguards unsure of how to act. Palioxis was quick to make a decision for them though and had the front guard, with the two scythes, charge forward to try and make use of this opening. The rear guard, with the shield, was kept in place in the likely event Fate was sneaking H.I.JACK around with its camouflage. This may have seemed like a foolish mistake on Fate''s part, as she''d left herself wide open to the front guard, but whether that was actually true or not was something Pali''s puppet was going to find out the hard way. The front guard weaved through the air and slithered forward to a position where it was looming above Fate and ready to decapitate her with a whirl of its two scythes. Fate snorted and threw out her arm, pointing the wrist mounted disc launcher Ares recalled seeing at the party previously towards the Scytheguard, and chanted the bestowal aspect art her treasure could bring forth. "Fritzbee!"


    Fate''s wrist mounted treasure, the ElectroMagnetic Papillon Disc Launcher, or EMP Disc Launcher for short, specialised in short circuiting electronics and treasures. A treasure didn''t necessarily have to be electronic to be affected by this but it made the effect more severe if that just so happened to be the case. Technology in general wasn''t safe when this treasure was being fired. As for how the treasure worked, it fired a frisbee from the disc launcher that would launch a pulse via a burst of energy once it was destroyed. The disc wouldn''t break by itself, however, but that was where the other half of the art came in. A small, holographic dog, of the Papillon breed, was summoned into existence by Fate''s side and immediately dashed after the Fritzbee. It wanted to play with the chew toy spiralling through the air and it was like a horse with blinkers, unfazed by anything else happening around it. The dog would leap at the Fritzbee, catch it in mid air after a glorious leap, and bite down on it to set it off. The effect was powerful so this was the ''drawback'' of the art as the dog could be interrupted in many ways and it was the only thing that could detonate the Fritzbee. If the Papillon pooch couldn''t puncture the projectile EMP device then the art was effectively cancelled and nothing would come of it. Still, even if this happened, the effort the opponent spared in dealing with the dog, either by blocking it from reaching its goal or outright killing it, meant they were focussed on it instead of Fate. The Scytheguard couldn''t ignore this situation either as it could tell the Fritzbee would put it out of commission for a while if it detonated and that wasn''t a preferable outcome this early in the fight.


    The front guard floated a few feet back to intercept the dog by taking a large swipe with one of its scythes and cleanly cutting the hologram in half. The dog let out a short whine and looked sad now that playtime was over as he fizzled out of reality. While this was happening, over by Palioxis the rear guard tensed as it felt something brush by it. Palioxis immediately ordered it to move from its current position and the rear guard managed to do so just in time to avoid the trap that nearly incapacitated it. H.I.JACK''s chains almost formed a noose around the Scytheguard''s neck which would have allowed it to lock down the guard and drag it around freely. Without the front guard retreating to aid the rear guard, had that scenario come to fruition, things would have gotten ugly fast. Palioxis couldn''t punish H.I.JACK though as it remained invisible the entire time its attack was launched. It didn''t have to break its cloaking for some of the weaker attacks and that made it a real nuisance to fight against as you almost always had to play by its terms. Ares could see it with his Omniscience but pretty much anyone who wasn''t an entire realm above Fate, at minimum, wouldn''t be able to locate this thing if it didn''t want to be discovered. It crept around, inspecting its foes from a close distance, practically close enough to bite them if it had a mouth with which to do so, and yet its foes were none the wiser. It was a deadly fog with a penchant for stalking. Even Skyzo couldn''t match this thing in the hunting department and he''d nicknamed it ''H.I.JACK The Ripper'' for self-explanatory reasons. Right now it posed a massive threat. If its chains caught the rear guard unaware then the claw would follow shortly after and then it would all be finished by the crushing grip scrunching up the guard into twisted metal. This process would be quick and brutal so it needed to be avoided at all costs lest Palioxis was interested in losing for whatever reason.


    For now at least, this was how this fight was going to go. The rear guard would be on the look out for tells that H.I.JACK was on the prowl and maintain its defensive stance to protect Palioxis. On the other side of things Fate would deploy all manner of treasures to stall the front guard until her H.I.JACK won the fight. It was a matter of who''s puppet could find or create an opening first and things were only just getting started. Fate''s arsenal was a long list and Palioxis'' puppets had a number of arts at their disposal, all of which meant this fight wasn''t going to end any time soon. H.I.JACK still had a shocking amount of offensive tricks left up its sleeve to ramp up the fight and the Scytheguards were also only getting started so the spectators were, unsurprisingly, glued to this fight.


    Cute girls fighting with remote controlled robots was an entirely new genre of entertainment that spawned off the back of this duel and would go on to become quite a popular tv show for generations to come. Funnily enough the C.O would even host competitions for the show in this very arena and the seats would be equally as jam packed as the internationals they held here. Of course the fights never quite reached the same intensity as the Fate vs Palioxis match but they were unique in their own way as the girls competing became idols of sorts with their own flamboyant and out-there personalities. Various spontaneous developments would spruce up the show like impromptu quizzes or singing competitions. It was quite the business and it boomed wildly out of control for a period. Even after the hype surrounding it quietened down it was still a popular genre of entertainment that many people flocked to. It became a staple of which Sheryashka was known for in the wider world, probably even more so than being the birth place of Ares... Technically the rebirth of Ares what with the whole ''he died'' thing but you get the point. long story short, cute = money. It should also be noted that Venus would start an offshoot with cute boys instead and, although it wasn''t quite as popular, it was still successful thanks to a small but highly dedicated fanbase...