C-Rank Ranked Match — Attacker Is Berserker

According to the manual, an Attacker starts out with these values:

Armor: B (80)

Thruster Output: A (100)

Thruster Capacity: B (80)

Precision: C (60)

Radar: D (40)

Stealth: E (20)

EN Capacity: C (60)

The radar-family stats sit low, while mobility and Armor run high.

And that Stealth rating is brutal. Slipping under an enemy’s radar is basically hopeless; this low, even a cloak wouldn’t count for anything. When it comes to spotting the enemy first, an Attacker never beats another unit.

And sure enough, right now Niko is surrounded.

In front of her stands a Space Girl with a saber and a handgun; behind her, a Space Girl with twin pistols; and up on the roof of the factory right beside them, a Space Girl dual-wielding sabers.

“Volley incoming!”

“All right!!”

Niko weaves through the storm of bullets at high speed.

“Incredible…”

What really gets me is Niko’s Thruster technique. Thruster recharges while your feet are on the ground and stalls the instant you leave it, so the only way to get it back is to land. But landing bends your knees, and that opens a brief recovery lock (an opening). Surrounded this badly, a landing like that gets you hunted down, every single time. And yet…

“…Thruster Boost up at about forty-five degrees, then instantly Thruster Boost back down on the diagonal and land skimming across the ground—so that’s how she recovers Thruster while still moving at high speed, with no landing lock at all…”

“That’s it, that’s it. It’s a technique called ‘Slide Step’.”

The closest thing I can picture is figure skating. Jump, land in a skim, then do it again, over and over, endlessly. Catching that would be near impossible.

“It’s a pretty tough technique, though. Botch the angle and your feet sink straight into the ground, and you’ve got to re-adjust every single time your Thruster Output changes.”

It looks so cool to watch. Fly, fly, skim the ground, fly, fly, skim the ground, and every so often she kicks off the wall of a nearby building for a foothold, cutting Slide Steps the whole way. One unit, running three of them ragged.

“There! Wide open!”

Skating along the factory wall, Niko whips two V-shaped weapons off the holders on her legs and hurls them.

“Those are…!”

“Boomerangs~”

The instant the metal boomerangs leave her hands, they wrap themselves in a skin of red energy. One of them slices into the right leg of the twin-pistol Space Girl.

“Ox!”

“Oxy!”

With one of them wounded, a stagger runs through the enemy formation. One of the others leaps out to cover her, the Space Girl dual-wielding sabers, the same as Niko.

“A-A dual-wield duel!”

The two of them lock blades, two sabers against two.

“It’s not gonna be a dual-wield duel, though~”

Niko grins and swings a leg up.

“That’s…!”

A laser saber extends along the line of her shin, and with it Niko carves into her opponent.

“Sabers in her shins!”

“Officially, they’re ‘Shin Sabers’. Nikki’s a four-blade fighter — two reverse-grip in her hands, two in her shins. That’s the trick of it~”

The enemy formation collapses even further.

“You’re mine…! High-Output Mode, ON!!”

Niko’s sabers double in length, their output visibly surging.

“What’s that?!”

“High-Output Saber. It’s a mode only sabers with Expandability 10 or higher can use, and it temporarily doubles the saber’s length and doubles its Power along with it.”

Spinning as she cuts Slide Steps, Niko threads her way between the three enemy units. A charging spin-slash. The lengthened laser sabers bend like whips and tear all three units apart.

“Huh…?” “Did she get me?” “No way…!”

All three units are deleted in a single stroke.

“Behold! The Niko Style, ‘Whirling Rampage’!”

The light goes out of Niko’s sabers.

“The High-Output Saber’s strong, but using it burns the saber’s entire EN. It takes time to charge back up—wait! Nikki!!”

“Sniper! Look out!”

— Blam! A round punches clean through the back of Niko’s skull.

“Huh.”

Struck through a vital point, Niko is deleted, and off she goes to a capsule bed.

“Huh?! Seriously?! Who got me?!”

Niko comes flying up out of the capsule bed.

“Going by the log, that’d be Renny of the Crimson Wings~”

The Crimson Wings’ sniper… the same one who got me, then.

“Gwaaah! Got killed in the single most infuriating way possible!”

“…That is what comes of getting carried away.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry!”

And with that, Marshmallow Smile is down to a single player. Shiina, and no one else.