The moment Chaos Mode stabilized, the void itself seemed to recoil, and for a fraction of a second nothing moved at all. Then they vanished.
Altopereh surged forward first, its massive frame tearing through space with impossible acceleration and its gray plasma blade stretching into a colossal arc of death, the vacuum warping under the pressure of its movement and leaving a distorted wake behind it, as if reality itself were struggling to keep up. The Hound met it head-on. A sonic crack rang across the battlefield as Larsen drove the Hound forward with Chaos Mode fully ignited, the Trident burning in his grip with its three prongs stretched out like the fangs of a god, while the thirteen white plasma swords behind him spun into motion — tight, controlled, deadly.
The first clash detonated like the birth of a star. Gray and orange plasma collided in a violent explosion. Shockwaves tore through the nearby debris and sent shattered hull fragments spinning into the abyss. Energy surged outward in layered rings that bent the light and twisted the paths of distant projectiles. Neither yielded. Altopereh pressed down, its raw power forcing the Trident back inch by inch, but Larsen twisted the Hound's frame to redirect the force, and its tail snapped up from below like a striking serpent, the segmented blade glowing white-hot as it lashed toward Altopereh's core. Youri reacted instantly. Altopereh released the blade lock and pivoted in place, bringing its armored forearm down to meet the tail. The impact rang out like a bell forged in hell, scattering sparks and molten fragments in every direction.
Then came the counterattack. Altopereh's chest panels flared open. A barrage of micro-singularity rounds erupted outward — tiny black spheres, none larger than a fist, launched at impossible speed and warping the space around them, so that wherever they passed, light bent inward, matter stretched and gravity screamed.
Larsen's eyes widened, and then sharpened. "Move."
The Hound exploded into motion as the thirteen plasma swords broke from their orbit and spread outward into a rotating shield, intercepting the incoming rounds one by one in bursts of violent distortion. Some were deflected; others detonated early and opened pockets of collapsing space that twisted and folded in on themselves before stabilizing again. One slipped through. It only grazed the Hound's shoulder — and for a split second, that section of armor ceased to exist. Not destroyed. Erased.
Larsen gritted his teeth as warnings flooded his interface, but he didn't slow down. He accelerated. Closing the gap again, he spun the Trident in a wide arc, its plasma flaring into a sweeping crescent that carved through the void, and Altopereh raised its blade to block — but the moment of contact triggered a second surge. The Trident split. Its three prongs separated and extended independently, snapping outward like jaws. Altopereh took the hit: one prong slammed into its shoulder plating and cracked the outer armor, another scraped across its torso and left a molten line on its surface, and the third was turned aside, but barely.
Youri felt it — the impact, the resistance, and something deeper beneath them. Excitement. Altopereh roared, not in pain, but in recognition.
The battlefield erupted again. Altopereh answered with overwhelming force, its back-mounted arrays igniting and flooding the space between them with a storm of high-intensity laser beams that cut across from every angle, crossing and overlapping until the battlefield had become a grid of lethal light. Larsen didn't retreat. He advanced through it. The Hound's tail whipped around and deflected beam after beam with precise, almost surgical movements. The plasma swords re-formed into a rotating barrier that absorbed and redirected the incoming fire, and its shoulder cannons unfolded and roared to life, launching concentrated bursts of orange plasma that met Altopereh's beams in midflight in a chain of explosions like a collapsing constellation.
Then they closed again — closer this time, too close. Altopereh dropped its blade and drove forward with raw mass, slamming into the Hound with enough force to send both units spiraling through space. Larsen stabilized first, twisting the Hound out of its spin, and fired a point-blank cannon blast straight into Altopereh's chest. The explosion swallowed them both.
From inside the fire, a shape moved. Altopereh emerged with its armor scorched but intact and its systems already compensating. Youri drove it on into overdrive, the gray aura around it deepening and bleeding into the void like smoke from a dying star. "Faster," he muttered. And it obeyed.
This time even Larsen struggled to track it. Altopereh blinked across space in violent bursts — appearing, striking, vanishing — and every movement ended in a devastating blow: a slash across the Hound's flank, a heavy strike to its back, a kick that sent it crashing into the drifting wreck of a cruiser. Inside the cockpit, Larsen coughed, and blood ran from his lips. "…Good."
The Hound rose again, and Chaos Mode flared brighter. The crown above its head pulsed, and the thirteen plasma swords answered it — not defensively this time, but in attack. Each blade became a projectile, controlled, guided, relentless, darting through space at extreme speed and striking from many directions at once; some went straight for Altopereh while others curved wide, anticipating its movement and cutting off its escape.
Youri's eyes narrowed. "Predictive control…"
Altopereh spun, deflecting several with its blade and dodging others, but one grazed its leg and sliced through the armor. Another struck its side and lodged there for an instant before detonating outward. For the first time, Altopereh was being driven back.
The Hound surged forward to seize the moment — Trident raised, tail coiled, cannons primed — and everything fired at once. The Trident came down from above, the tail drove in from below, the cannons unleashed a barrage from mid-range, and the remaining plasma swords converged from every direction. A perfect kill formation.
Youri didn't hesitate. Altopereh stood its ground, its core flared, and space bent. A pulse of gravitational distortion burst outward and disrupted every trajectory, slowing the incoming attacks just enough for Youri to move. Altopereh surged upward, slipping between the collapsing vectors, its blade blazing brighter than ever as it drove forward in a single decisive thrust — straight at the Hound's core.
Larsen saw it coming. And smiled.
At the last possible moment the tail snapped forward — not to block, but to redirect. The blade pierced through the tail segment and missed the core by inches. That was enough. The Trident came down and struck Altopereh squarely across the torso. The impact was catastrophic: a shockwave tore through the battlefield and threw both units in opposite directions, Altopereh smashing through a field of debris and shattering metal like glass before it finally steadied itself, and the Hound skidding across space with its engines screaming as Larsen forced it back under control.
Silence followed — brief, and heavy. Both units hung there in the void, damaged, burning, alive. Youri wiped the blood from his face, his breathing steady in spite of the chaos, and across from him Larsen leaned forward with his eyes blazing. There were no words between them, and no taunts. Only understanding — the understanding of two men who had each found, at last, an opponent equal to what they were.
They launched again, and the void itself trembled at what was coming next.