160 Darkness

Altair was enjoying herself. As the music from Infinite Glasteel played in the background, she was lying on the ground while surrounded with over three dozen all black mecha figurines. These little figurines were in the middle of an intense battle with one another with various melee weapons.

Each Mecha that was in the battle was different from the last and their designs varied heavily. Some were inspired directly from the shows she had watched while others she had come up with herself. The ones she had come up with herself were… oddly balanced in some areas and didn't make sense in others. However, they still managed to move and attack with a certain degree of realism that was surprising giving their overall shape.

Despite their best attempts, though, they weren't able to match the Mecha from the shows in their attacks with one another. That didn't stop them from trying again and again though, learning from their mistakes and losses after Altair remade them with her Shadow Magic.

Altair had a big and satisfied smile on her face as she watched the fights between them and learned a lot herself.

While it was slightly draining on her Mana to play in this way, it was still more fun than one would suspect. Altair only gave them a simple command upon creation: duel one on one until there are no others. Losers are destroyed. It was a basic tournament style in her opinion, one that she was stealing directly from the first tournament she had ever seen when she had met Marissa.

Still, watching the little Mechas fight one another was also valuable experience for herself. It allowed her to make new iterations of Mechas from her imagination that would then go on to practice the new changes against the Mechas she had seen in the shows she watched. Of course, the Mechas from the shows were also learning from the battles as well and improving the way they fought.

Due to limitations on Shadow Magic, Altair couldn't give them ranged weapons. She had no idea how the energy cannons and ballistic cannons worked in the show. She couldn't make them in any way to work effectively. Since that was the case, she didn't bother and it was an all-melee tournament only.

But that didn't matter. Her Shadows that she created acted based on all of the experience she had learned from everything she had seen or done herself. This included the mini-battles she was watching right now before her eyes. Every use of the Shadow Magic caused the little Shadow Mechas to improve and grow and gave Altair more and more ideas on designs.

It was like every generation grew stronger, faster, and smarter than the last.

And that was part of the point.

As Altair watched show after show that had unique and interesting Mecha designs in them that she couldn't dream of, she had grown more and more to want to make her own to pilot. Since that was so far away and likely to never happen with the time she had remaining, she settled for the next best thing: Shadow Mechas.

While these little guys only came up to her knees in the largest case, they still greatly satisfied her creative urges that she had started to get. Of course, she made sure that all of them were the same size unless she wanted to try a size different fight with a specific idea involved.

Still, their designs varied wildly past the ones she took from the shows she had seen. Of the ones she made herself, this time around, one of them had a turtle shell for a shield that could shoot spikes out of it. Another had a whip tail that it would use to try and entangle its opponent's legs. Yet another one had arms that could stretch out to give it enhanced melee range. She had even made one that looked more like a dragon than a person.

None of them this time around were doing that good against the show-inspired Mecha. In fact, they were getting soundly crushed across the board.

That didn't dampen Altair's mood at all. It just meant that the gimmicks she had thought up weren't any good so they could be cast aside and she could try the next iteration once this mini tournament was over.

Altair wasn't spending a whole lot of Mana on them, even though this was the eleventh tournament fight today and, probably, the last one given the time of night that was coming and how much harder it was for Altair to think up new designs. This was mostly due to the size of the little shadow creations and how little power they had. They were made for fun, after all, so if Altair had given them too much Mana they might have damaged something in the room that they were using for cover or something.

This tournament had come down to Glasteel itself and a Stelox, Gargonaz Stelox to be exact. It was the main "villain" Mecha of Infinite Glasteel. Altair couldn't stop a genuine smile from forming on her face as she started to cheer loudly for Gargonaz Stelox. She didn't want their fight to end the same way it did in the show…

As she watched the two miniature Mechas clash over and over again in a frenzied, albeit bit slow for her, fashion, the lights in the room and the Holodisplay flicked off without warning. It dropped the room into total darkness that would be impossible to see through as a Human.

It was startling, even for Altair who suddenly had her vision shift from full color to dull colors. That was how she knew it had happened. This caused her brow to rise slightly as she sat up where she was while reluctantly dismissing the shadow creations, who were in an epic fight, before her. She frowned as she stood to her feet and attempted to hear anything from the rooms around her.

However, like every other day, she couldn't hear anything outside her room. She didn't want to open the door because she knew the Mana Fog was very likely still around and she didn't want to let it in. So, she waited in the darkness instead.

She waited for several minutes as she stood where she was. If someone had flashed a light through the room with normal sight, they would have been startled to see someone just standing in the darkness like a weirdo.

Eventually, the door opened with a hiss and Din entered the room. She was illuminated by her communicator on her wrist. She walked into the room and the door closed behind her without a hiss. The Mana Fog immediately started to invade with its tendrils but it was greatly slowed when the door closed.

Din gave Altair a reassuring smile as she thought the girl would be startled or scared from the sudden darkness of the room. She spoke in a warm tone as she said, "Dear Guest, please remain calm. The power has gone out but it shouldn't be long before it is restored."

Altair couldn't stop herself from asking, "Why did it go out?" She had never seen the power go out before. She didn't even know that was possible until now.

Din immediately replied, "It could be any number of reasons. Since the breaker doesn't seem to have any effect, we suspect that it's-"

The door behind Din started to swing up, causing Din to turn around with a frown and a questioning gaze. She had told the others that she would take care of letting Altair know about the situation so they shouldn't have bothered to even come up.

The person who was on the other side of the door was not known to Altair or Din. The very sight of the man, who was dressed in a plain white button shirt and fashionable black pants, caused Din to start to put up her guard as she immediately realized something was wrong.

The man had a hand raised with his wrist split open so that his palm was hanging down. From the insides of his wrist was a two pronged weapon that had an eerie orange light generated between them. It pointed this weapon at Din without a word and a flash of range shot from it.

Din didn't even have time to register she was under attack before her body began to be reduced to dust. It only took half a second before her clothes fell to the ground in a pile of ash with nothing else remaining.

The man walked into the room and looked around the room before it settled its eyes on Altair.

Altair herself stared blankly at what Din had become. She didn't understand what happened until the images of the dust filled room and the lack of Number One came to her mind. It was then that she walked over to the dust and fell to her knees before it as she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her chest.

She didn't know Din long but she liked her. She couldn't treat her as family but she didn't want to see her die, especially not in such an impossible way, before her very eyes.

In disbelief, Altair grabbed some of the ash into her hand as her brain was still trying to accept that such a weapon could exist.

The man before her put the normal hand to its ear and said, "Target found and secured. Third floor, east room."

Altair was oddly calm despite the stabbing feeling in her chest. She let the ash fall from her hand as she looked up at the person before her. What he said combined with what she saw told Altair that it was the same people who captured her after she had teleported back to the Empire. This meant that Din's death was her fault because she was here.

She let out a long breath while looking back down at what remained of Din, 'Guess I should at least get revenge for you before I leave. Sorry I dragged you into this, Din.'

She looked up once more at the man before her as the strange ash weapon hand was closed and his other hand was opening, revealing a circular tube in it. Altair swiped her hand at him while burning her Mana and a checkered pattern of threads came out from her body and raced towards it.

The threads hit some kind of shield on the android that caused the android to pause and look around the room again in confusion. The shield had flashed blue before it completely negated the threads that Altair sent at it.

Altair had seen enough Mecha shows to know that it was some kind of energy shield that blocked certain types of attacks.

This caused Altair's eyes to narrow as she had burned a tenth of the Mana she access to do to that.

'Fine,' she thought grimly to herself, 'We'll do this the hard way then.'