"Standby for..."

"DAD! I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD! IF YOU EVEN MAKE THAT JOKE I WILL MAKE SURE YOU END UP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FUCKING OCEAN JUST LIKE I DID TO WESKER!"

"She's just pissed that we're fighting the Titan that can counter Tone." Sheva commented from inside Rico's cockpit, flexing Rico's fingers on the shield's grip in her right hand, while his left was empty in preparation for drawing the Goliath when they landed on the ground.

"Tone is bae! You stay out of this!" Yuuki replied sternly, which gave Tobias the opening he needed.

"Standby for Titanfall!"

With an almighty leap from the opened cargo lift on the keel of the Nightfall, she and Rico dropped from the ship with the Boosters already slowing the freefall long before they slammed into the main entrance of the Syndicate base in the middle of the desert, facing the large curved hangar that was carefully positioned in the side of the rocky hills.

Slamming the shield onto the edge of the crater in the concrete, Sheva already knew that the soldiers had been stunned by the Nightfall's arrival, and were only now just beginning to raise the alarm in a rising wave of panicked yells into radios and running into the base for heavier weaponry.

"Ronin CQC-140! You are my target, I demand that you retrieve your pilot and face me immediately!" Rico's voice had an authorative, powerful air to it as he addressed the sword wielding mech that was somewhere inside the hangar.

"You think they gave it an AI core too?" Sheva asked, and Rico gave an affirmation sound.

"I do think it's possible, yes. Though I doubt it bears a dynamic coding concept or even a personality, if it does exist." Rico replied with the internal speakers. "Detecting infantry armed with small arms and anti-armour weaponry, deploying countermeasures until Ronin's arrival."

with that, the sonic system activated to deter the rocket launchers, and with the large shield, they infantry knew better than to bother shooting at him as they detected the vibrations of the Ronin's footsteps approaching from within the hangar, coming sprinting into the sunlight and slid to a halt with one hand reaching over a shoulder to grasp the hilt of the massive sword, only a few feet shorter than the Ronin was, just like Valentine said it would.

"Motoko here, we're scanning the hull's design to compare it to the old schematic, give us another thirty seconds and we'll send you the new flaws if we find any."

"If it's the power core, I might try to do a real Rodeo on the fucker." Sheva reported. "Otherwise I am going to use that sword on him and keep it for myself."

"So far there's no visible weaponry, nor weapon systems. However, I do detect explosive armour systems on the limbs and part of the body." Rico reported, then indicated the distinctive square panels of the shaped charges in Sheva's HUD.

"Explosive armour?!" Sheva raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"It's like Rico's sonic countermeasures, but each panel is one-time use. It's meant to counter explosions by blasting outwards away from the hull." Valentine explained. "I originally designed Rico to have several, but reconsidered when I got ahold of the designs for the sonic system."

"BSAA-NF01, the Cherub Class... Rico, huh? And I hear you're piloted by a little girl. Heh, time to show you some real combat, chicky. C'mon, let's dance!" The pilot spoke with a similar set of external speakers like Rico had, making the Ronin heft the sword into one hand, then waved the other hand in a three-fingered 'come and get me' taunt.

"Motoko here, it's the power core and the access hatch again. They changed everything but the top of the head, and looks like they made it a few feet taller than the original. Give them hell, we'll make sure to pull you out if things turn to shit."

"Rico, y'know that new playlist I made at school on my phone?" Sheva grinned as Rico chuckled in reply. "Shuffle please. Let's see which ones we're working with."

"Internal or external speakers?" Rico asked as he hacked her phone up onboard the Nightfall, and presented her with a small display in the holographic HUD that was waiting for her to hit play.

"External." Sheva grinned as she tapped it without even hesitating. And of course, that same display - which was an exact copy of her phone - now displayed the song name... Get Jinxed.

"That better not be what I think I'm hearing..." Yuuki's voice came into the radio line, and Rico chuckled as the surrounding soldiers tensed or shared glances at the rising sound of the song's deceptively subtle intro.

"What do you think it is?" He asked in reply as Sheva grinned and drew the Goliath and raised the shield in a horizontal position, leveling the revolver over the edge of the shield and opened fire on the Ronin, landing two shots on the cockpit's canopy, testing the hull's capabilities against her gun.

Both shots made the mech stumble slightly, but immediately recovered and charged forward with both hands gripping the hilt of the sword, shrugging off the remaining four rounds as Sheva shoved the revolver back into the holster and clenched that hand into a fist while preparing to use the shield to parry the blade and sidestep out of the block into her next move.

The Ronin raised the sword into a left-to-right downward diagonal slash, but Sheva swung the shield up and into the swing and slammed it into the Ronin's exposed forearm as she smoothly transitioned the block into spinning on Rico's heel and swinging Rico's left arm into a sudden elbow slam against the back of the Ronin's right shoulder, causing it to falter and stumble forward several steps before sliding one foot around to change both direction and stance to face the sight of Sheva casually dumping the spent casings out of the Goliath and smoothly reloading with just the left hand, flicking the cylinder back into position just like Tobias did with his own revolvers. By now Get Jinxed had ended, admittedly too short for what it was worth, and the next song that immediately began to play was Natural Born Killer by Avenged Sevenfold.

"Cute, Tobias taught you that trick, didn't he?" The Ronin pilot taunted as he began to circle around Rico, keeping his sword raised with both hands held low near the Ronin's 'groin' so that the blade rose diagonally in front of himself. "Him and those shield Kagune he's got, wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that the shield was his idea too."

"Rico, Sheva, I have an idea." Tobias spoke up suddenly. "Lure him into a pattern of some kind, try to make it look like a specific fighting technique, then when he starts to pick up on the style, swap controls with each other to throw him off. Right now that stance of his is too deceptive, and he's gonna expect you to block any slashes like that first one in the same style."

"Alright, I follow the logic. I'll get the pattern going this way, Rico, can you do more 'brutish' methods in comparison?" Sheva raised the shield in the same horizontal position as before, aiming the Goliath over the top again in preparation to dodge his next slash.

"I can. Just say when to take over." Rico agreed to the idea. "I would fire now to get him to stop circling."

With that Sheva fired once to get him to react, and he did, immediately stepping backwards to throw off her aim while raising the sword into an obvious stance meant for an impaling strike and started to rush forward.

"Block again, then shoot from point blank." Rico pointed out as Sheva readied the shield vertically as the sword glanced off the shield and caused the Ronin to immediately collide with the shield as the sword clattered several meters away from them as Sheva immediately fired the Goliath as fast as she could into the armoured torso until the Ronin stumbled backwards and landed on his back. "Grab the sword!"

Sheva immediately dropped the shield and went for the sword, sliding on Rico's legs to smoothly grab the weapon in one hand, turning back to see that the Ronin had had the same idea, and was now attempting to lift the disproportionate shield in front of himself, unable to do so without using both arms just to get it into a vertical position.

Sheva immediately stopped her music partway through Natural Born Killer and approached the cowering Ronin with his own sword.

"Rico, your turn." Sheva stopped several paces short, disengaging manual control to let Rico have his fill of the duel. "Engage external speakers." She ordered before she began speaking just like he'd done during the first part of the duel. "If you haven't noticed yet, I've chosen to stop my music to let someone else have their fill of defeating you and your knockoff Titan. A REAL Ronin doesn't just have a sword, it uses a shotgun called Leadwall. You don't even have any weapons systems either, do you? Not to mention that you're about ten feet shorter than Rico, which is an obvious disadvantage. And to top it all off, you're using strictly manual controls to operate your Ronin, and even I can see that you're struggling to carry my shield right now. You don't have an AI that controls the mech for you, at all. You're relying on an old design, so face the facts and stop hurting yourself with my shield, alright?"

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" The pilot snarled as he shoved the shield aside and rushed for his sword, only for Rico to extend his free hand and grab the Ronin's own arm before instantly swinging the sword and cut off the ungrabbed arm with an upward swing that he smoothly transitioned into an icepick grip while pivoting his torso around to impale the blade straight through the front of the cockpit by thrusting it behind himself under his own arm, finishing off the spin by sliding one foot in a half circle to face the crippled Ronin that had now dropped onto it's knees in front of him.

"To the Syndicate presently witnessing this, both locally and remotely... heed my warning; I am Cherub Class BSAA-NF01... but you may call me Rico." Rico announced in his own voice as he shoved the sword completely through the Ronin's body and out of the back, which revealed the blood covering the end before he roughly withdrew the weapon from the chassis and turned to the infantry that had been hiding and avoiding provoking the larger mech.

"Armed infantry detected... Engaging."