Chains Of Pride

"So you mean to have us use our Wild Card Play? No way!" The booming voice of Himiya Genju could be heard from outside the Medic Ward he was recuperating in.

"You're just mad because I knocked you out!" Matching his own fury was none other than Magenai Tamashi, the captain of Team Reiger.

Seeing the two of them go at it, the rest of Team Proelius was on the sidelines watching the back and forth between the two, whilst Lanzo was rubbing the temples of his head.

"Y-You only caught me by surprise! If I was on guard you couldn't have thrown me as easily as you had!"

"Yeah!? Well, then you shouldn't have written on my face, you unusual weirdo!"

"It was an accident, I thought you were a fan."

"Because of you, I had to explore the world of makeup to hide what you did until this thing fades, look at me! All cherried up and shit!"

Hearing this, Lanzo was aware that this was going nowhere fast. So he decided to step in, though he had never spoken at length with Tamashi outside of battle for a long time, he was sure of one thing.

She was one hell of a stubborn hothead in most cases, "Hold on Captain Himiya, Tamashi, why do you want to join in on the last sequence? Surely, you don't expect us to believe that you're feeling left out because you're not in this championship sequence right?"

When he heard this, even Himiya Genju quieted down. Though they had been quarrelling all this time, her reason in regards to this had never been brought up.

Moreover, though Lanzo's latter reasoning sounded downright petty, it was indeed true that for the last few years, every Championship Sequence had been between Teams Reiger and Pelerion butting heads.

Almost like the Championship had become their personal battlefield, as no other Engage Team had come close in regards to their combat prowess.

"Why you ask? It's simple, it's nothing as trivial as me being unable to fight in the Championship Sequence, I'm not that conceited to think I inherently belong there and I'm insulted you'd even think that. If I lost, then I lost, however, something about that Erebus's Pegasus doesn't sit well with me, no matter how I think about it."

She saw that all eyes in the room were on her as she spoke, a spark of confusion dotted their features, "Look I don't expect you all to understand, but I can see that a few among you can more or less get what I'm trying to say."

Truth be told, Lanzo, the captain, and a few others did understand where she was getting at.

This feeling of unrest came from when you were beaten by an opponent and you were not convinced by the loss.

Engage sequences and the fighters within them were very fickle things.

Fighting in each sequence were not simply the fighters themselves, but the Novare Institutions they represented.

The nature of the suit they wore, the complexities of the environment and many other factors were put into play that allowed an Engage team to come together.

However, there would be times when things like the disparity of the conditions between two teams were so frighteningly large, that the losing team would feel unsatisfied, unconvinced with the results.

They would think that they lost to the suit, and not the fighter, or that the other team just hid here and there while the other team just used powerful attacks that drained their power core/unit, resulting in them losing when their suit could no longer work.

Of course, Tamashil wouldn't say what she had said for small-minded things such as these, and everyone here knew it, pride doesn't only belong to a Talium after all, and the Captain had hers.

"What would you say you lost to?" Genju couldn't but ask after a moment of silence.

"To be honest, I haven't the slightest, it didn't feel like I was fighting another person or even the suit. It felt like I was fighting 'something' that looked down on me every step of the way and it pissed me."

She gritted her teeth in annoyance and anger that as she went on, "But even with all that, just before I lost, I could tell that something more than what they wore was what took me out."

She couldn't even comprehend her loss from back then. It just didn't feel right, her instincts were screaming this at her!

"An in'essence based attack, is this what she meant?" This was the question Lanzo asked himself.

Captain Himiya, however, being unaware of the world beyond his own, wasn't fully convinced of this.

He was about to respond when he heard his Ace take the lead once more, "What about your Armis? Wasn't inferno destroyed?"

Her attention snapped back to him, "About that, so I found this thing called a Kia…"

Lanzo's eyes shrank to the size of a pin, "You didn't…"

She nodded to indicate that she did.

"It wasn't easy, he's pretty stubborn, and he kept going on and on about some one-of-a-kind power core, but I told him to just do his best," her shoulders slightly jumped as if this had nothing to do with her.

Lanzo sighed when he heard this, he was thinking about finding Kia himself to get her an Armis since her own was out of commission.

With that being said, Lanzo already made up his mind regarding her request, "Captain Himiya, let's accept her request for now."

Not just Genju, but all the members of Proelius stared wide-eyed at Lanzo.

What did he mean he accepted her? Where was the trust between men? Lanzo wasn't like this before, he was so cool and indifferent to them, is this what it's like having a girlfriend?

That said, what kind of girlfriend and boyfriend were these two to begin with? It was like one just woke up and decided that 'yeah they be mine starting today.'

Even Tamashi stared at him a bit surprised for a while before she came back to herself with a devastatingly beautiful smirk. It caused all the men in the room, barring Lanzo, to hold their breath in amazement, "Hmph, I thought you were gonna bitch and m.o.a.n about it a little longer. Well, what say you, Captain?" She aked, executing a flashy and obviously bow at the waist towards their patient on the bed.

Captain Himiya breathed out in exasperation at the situation before him. What to do?

Wild Card Play was one of the riskiest motion to pull out in 'Engage'. It allowed one to take and for the team to accept any single member from another team that had been knocked out by that very same team.

It had only been executed a handful of times before because It carried with it a high amount of risk. Simply adding another element to the already set cohesiveness of any team could easily cause it to come apart.

Successive failures had caused it to be one of those options that were rarely utilised in the game, and now it was about to see a revival between two teams that no one saw coming.

"Fine, you're in," he stated in defeat. "However, the results of this rests entirely on your shoulders Lanzo!"

…

"So tell me why in the world am I currently here with you, working around the clock trying to create a new Armis for a sequence that's only two days away when this isn't even my area of expertise?" Gero asked.

"Because I asked nicely and you're also my teammate," Kia stated.

He was currently standing in front of this console where before him were two Armis's, one red and one black that were encased in a crystalline capsule.

"Screw your asking nicely, I had to rush back because you said it was an emergency!" Though he was complaining, Gero didn't let up on his work in the slightest.

His eyes ran over the figures the diagnostics had shown him as he moved to correct them on a console of his own, "I swear the only reason I'm still here is that the shitty Shepherd has been oddly absent the last couple hours, which I find both disturbing and soothing, I'm conflicted here! Not to forget that this is a chance for me to see you and your work with the attobots at work. Which reminds me, how in the world did you-"

"Red Creep! What in the world have you done with my man!?! Get your a.s.s out here right now!"

Both Kia and Gero froze in there movements as a voice dripping with malice came from the outside.

"Is that?" Gero recalled a certain event in a flashback from quite some time ago. "Well, my memories dear memories, it is Ab'hig Eediatt, what in the world did you do to get that idiot's attention?"

Kia looked in his direction, "Ab'hig Eediatt? You mean that high profile S-Class Digium?"

Gero nodded, "The very same."