✴

If you keep trying to evade her forever, she’ll only wear down your defenses over time. You’d better neutralize her attack instead, you think. You activate your weapon. A narrow, bright beam extends to infinity, fluctuating between every visible color. It passes through the branches of the tree as your commands all ignore its existence. You sweep its ray in a tight circle above you as Akiko’s weapon slashes down at you. It cuts through the wires. Their tips dissolve into light before they can strike you, and their fragments spiral up into the sky.

You sense a flash of concern through your empathic link, fear even. She is vulnerable. Not wasting your opening, you direct your weapon straight at your opponent and fire. But as its simulated photons strike her shield, its beam bends in an arc around her, continuing along its path behind her.

“Optical attacks, Aydan?” she says. “Light reaches me only as much as I want it to!” The beam’s path behind her suddenly turns as the photon stream wraps around her in a parabolic orbit and points directly back at you. You stop your attack just in time to refocus on your shield. Its liquid surface scatters the light and protects you, but wears down your focus. You feel a sense of satisfaction from your opponent.

It would take an optics autistic to find a way to penetrate Akiko’s gravitational lens program. You decide a different approach will be needed.