Ilfrith

------------------------------------------- It's difficult to parse the footage attached to this message, everything is a blur and the few coherent moments don't make a ton of sense without greater context. There are flashes where frames appear, or ruined pieces of them seem to hang in the air. The background doesn't help much either. Wherever this takes place is dark. A grey cloudy sky hangs over foliage so darkly pigmented as to be entirely black.

Slowing the video down helps, but not much. Everything happens in a flash, the way the world moves is disorienting- enough to cause motion sickness in someone unprepared to see what's on the screen. Only by bringing the footage to an absolute crawl, is it possible to get the gist of what's happening here.

Nobody moves like this.

Nobody can.

In a beat of time where the average pilot can normally make about one decisive movement, the thing in this footage seems to make about five or six. A constant ASURA protocol might be the best comparison to what's happening. That said the persistent rhythm on display is faster than anything a human or demosian pilot can reasonably perceive, much less actually manage with this amount of control and finesse.

Pulse blade carves through a Sherman's leg, it collapses as the fluid motion continues in a forward surge and the first frame's squaddie loses his head, and a harsh turn of the sword and a diagonal cut into the ground splits a third in half- its halves falling on either side of the frame that split it so cleanly. A Tokugawa appears from nowhere, fired by jump jets towards the POV frame, only to be struck at the perfect point of failure between the legs for it to come apart in just the same way as the Sherman strewn about the ground - its torches millimeters from cutting into the bright green frame before being cut faster than it could naturally react. This happens time and time again, each strike is perfect, punching through cockpits or hitting precisely where a frame can't compensate. Each arc of the blade cuts through more than one machine and a fourth of the kills recorded happen after a point where the pilot should be dead as they twist and tilt just enough for each shot and strike to just scrape the side of their machine. There's no urgency, no concern. Everything that approaches the green frame is dispatched in a movement that is somehow both graceful, and perfectly rote.

The colors and emblems on each frame are consistent with the Brigade Legion's "Michigan" unit, who've been conspicuously out of the news recently. Expert pilots with a particularly poor reputation in the rim for brutal tactics, the "bad" cop to the first forward's "good." Still though, Lancers, by any definition of the word. This is apparent in their tactics too. They do everything right, working together, trying to protect one another and covering individual weaknesses, striking at every moment their opponent seems occupied with something else. They move from angles the frame can't cover. They strike with the trained finesse of those whose frames are an extension of themselves. They fire keen shots that would land directly anywhere else, with anyone else. They use every bit of their frames, working with underhanded creativity at every turn. It just isn't enough. Every smart tactical decision ends the exact same way a poor one would. Every moment of skill put on display comes microseconds before their frame is bisected, their cockpit is punched out, or their reactor is ruptured.

There is no win condition. Not for them.