The Battle of Bunraku (1), also known as the Battle of the Marionettes, happened in the year 3297 and confronted the Toshiko´s hacked Mech army against a coalition of Shogunate forces and the mercenary clans as defenders of the Shogunate against the attempt of Toshiko to take over the entire galaxy, starting for the Shogunate as her first step.
The Seeds of War (3296)
Toshiko was a brilliant and aggressive pilot and programmer, who had found a way to develop a tremendously invasive AI, by which she could remotely take over an control unmanned Mechs.
Because of her turbulent character, she was expelled from her clan, the Brotherhood. This fact led her to fall prey to immense bitterness and to an uncontrolled spirit of revenge.
Desiring the recognition that was denied to her, she decided to conquer the entire galaxy with the support of her newly acquired capability to raise wide armies of remote controlled Mechs.
Siege to the Shogunate (3297)
As a first step, she decided that her first victim would be the Shogunate. So she went with her rising tide of hacked Mechs towards the very Imperial capital: Xanadu.
In her way, the guards of the Imperial Guard fell before the pilots could even jump into their Mechs to deal with her force, and the few times in which they could manage to avoid get their Mechs hacked, they had to fight an overwhelming force made with the Mechs of their fellows and piloted by a superior hive mind mimicking the great pilot skills of the own Toshiko.
For long hours, the forces stationed on the outer perimeter of Shin Edo / Xanadu, received with apprehension the reports of the rising tide of unmanned Mechs looming from all directions over them.
The Course of the Battle (3297)
The battle was unconventional, as the defenders did not fight piloted Mechs, but Mechs remotely controlled by the Toshiko's AI. So the only choice for the defenders was to locate the personal Toshiko's Mech in the hope that the AI that controlled the army of Marionettes were staying with her.
During the battle, no one noticed it, neither Toshiko, nor the Defenders, but later analysis show a subtle sequence of tactical and mechanical errors that reduced the battle capacity of the Toshiko's army, allowing the defenders to locate, surround and hunt her.
A critical impact on the power plant of the Toshiko's personal Mech destroyed both, Mech and the pilot inside, apparently confirming the Shogunate plans as the whole hacked army stopped the fight, remaining inanimate, like an army of mechanical puppets to which the threads had been cut off.
A surprising Finding
Although the victory in the battle was attributed that day to the Shogunate and the mercenary clans that lined up that day, nowadays it is known that the AI known as AM played a decisive role sabotaging and betraying the plans of Toshiko until causing her death, with which AM was free from masters, transcending into the Cyber Space.
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(1) Bunraku is an ancestral and traditional form of Japanese puppet theatre, created in Osaka (Old Terra), during the beginning of the 17th Century.
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