Chapter Two: Astra-X Awakens

The two Void mechs attacked from left and right, dark blades crossing toward the cockpit. Leon closed his eyes. He stopped treating the mech as an object outside himself. He made those forty meters of steel his bones, the thrust wings his lungs, the reactor his heart. The storm slowed. The enemy paths became two clear lines in his mind. "Astra-X." "Here." "Overload the left-arm pulse array." "Overload will permanently destroy the array." "We need to win, not stay intact." In the next instant, Astra-X's left arm blazed into a blue-white sun. As the two blades stabbed in, Leon spun the frame. The pulse array detonated along the edge of the first enemy blade, and hard light swallowed half the battlefield.