Well, it's been six years. Lets see if this is any better. If you're going to leave a review, don't be gentle. I want to know exactly what you hate and just how much you hate it. That said, if you're a jackass about it I'll just ignore you.
This is just a short teaser really. Something I've been toying with lately, but haven't fully fleshed out or writing. This scene takes place somewhere in the middle of this little thought experiment of mine. I won't give any more details about it, otherwise everyone will be massively spoilered and that's no fun.
Stage ?: Ignition
21MAR2017 a.t.b.
Tokyo Concession and Surrounding Area
A-319 Motorway Southbound, towards Shinjuku Ghetto
It would rain soon.
A blanket of dismally gray clouds smothered the sun. The people of Tokyo once more broke out their winter coats. Winter's final death rattle tore through the Concession. Grimy clouds churned and flashed over Tokyo Bay and the greater Pacific. Lightning arced across the sky, ripping the bloated clouds open and releasing a billion little hammer blows. Most sensible people did what they could to avoid the storm. They took cover in their homes and offices, under bus stops and in subway terminals, wondering where they had left their umbrellas and when the rain would let up. These people were - for the most part - normal, and quite possibly sensible.
Kallen Stadtfeld was neither normal nor sensible. She sat in the passenger seat of a box which Nagata, an ornery man, drove.
Nagata would die today.
Kallen choked the life out of a battered assault rifle, an old Soviet production, and stared down the passenger side mirror. Someone had poorly spray painted the rifle in muddled grays, tans, and greens. It was molting, its Krylon skin sloughing off to reveal a powdery layer of rust and old scars. The rifle was well used, and would continue to be well used.
A Britannian attack helicopter tailed the van at a distance. Kallen wished for a heavier weapon as she eyed it. She could deploy in Baby, the RPI-11 Glasgow stowed in the back of the van. Baby could down the gunship pursuing them with ease. Deploying a Knightmare Frame in the middle of Tokyo would only attract the Royal Panzer Infantry's attention. Kallen didn't fear the RPI. No, she welcomed the opportunity to fight them. To break their equipment, to exhaust their supplies, to crush their soldiers.
Kallen, shaking, took a moment to center herself.
Inhale, hold, exhale, hold.
Inhale, hold, exhale, hold.
Experience, and what little sense Kallen tenuously held onto, won out over impulse and rage in this case. The 9th Britannian Colonial Army was a sleeping dragon, and she knew it would do no good to wake it prematurely. And so, Kallen elected to hold on to the Kozuki Resistances one and only ace until its use was absolutely necessary.
Kallen once again focused on the passenger side mirror. A police cruiser was coming after them. It was a mile back, maybe, and closing quickly. The rotors of a gunship sounded high overhead, likely a police observer, that or a news helicopter.
The mood in the cab was tense. Kallen lashed out, swiftly kicking the glovebox in her frustration.
"Is this beat up piece of shit really the best you had on hand?"
Nagata glowered.
"We didn't have any time to prepare for this shit. Like you can complain anyway, I don't see you rushing to our aid with all the guns n' other shit that we need."
Kallen, boiling, sneered at the man.
"Fuck's that supposed to mean?"
Sharp red fingers tore deep furrows into the wooden fore grip, peeling off Krylon and long wooden splinters. The rear dust cover creaked and groaned in her other hand.
"You've been back for three months and haven't done shit but sit in the Concession with your thumb up your ass while we starve in the ghetto."
"Ex-cuse me? I'm enlisted, asshole! I have shit to do all goddamn day, I can't just leave the Concession whenever the fuck I want to, this isn't like being at Ashford full time anymore!"
"Don't gimme that, you're a countess, you can get away with a lotta shit!"
Kallen huffed and snapped her teeth together smartly.
"First: I'm an heiress, not a countess. I don't get away with shit unless my dad bails me out. And second: Really? Really! Do you really want to get into this right now!"
"Yeah, I wanna know. What the fuck have you been doing since you got back? Because you sure as shit aren't helping us!"
"And just what the fuck am I supposed to do," Kallen wrenched the mag out of her rifle, checked it, slapped it back in, and cycled the bolt, "waltz up to the fuckin' quartermaster at Fort Haven and say 'oh hello, could I get three hundred rifles and thirty thousand bullets to go please? Plus a side order of Sutherlands and a diet fuckin' coke?'"
Nagata hissed and swerved around a dawdling minivan.
"You work there, you should be able to get us more than who the viceroy is screwing today, or whatever the fuck bullshit info you've been sending us!" Nagata blasted the horn as he weaved between cars on the motorway. He wanted to get out of the Concession as quickly as possible. The shrill wail of approaching police sirens served as a great motivator for Nagata.
"What the fuck crawled up your ass and died? Do you have any idea how much goddamn scrutiny I'm under in the Concession?"
Kallen dug around under the seat of the van as she unloaded on Nagata.
"The military is still investigating me for going AWOL last year," She ripped a grimy duffle bag out from beneath her seat and rummaged through it.
"The bloody Sub-Viceroy is breathing down my neck because I once made eye contact with her sister," She slapped a beat-to-shit Nambu and a spare magazine in Nagata's lap before diving back into the duffle, "in addition to her creepy obsession with me me for the whole AWOL thing."
"My idiot CO is an arrogant, manipulative, womanizing, megalomaniac asshole," she pulled out a rusty Tokarev in a nylon holster and strapped it to her thigh, "with a pathological need to focus the whole fucking world's attention on him, which means China, Europe, and all of Britannia are watching everyone around him - including me!"
Her coat pocket swallowed a decently modern 2-meter handset. A similar one was taped to the dash near the steering wheel. There was only a bit more equipment left in the bag, stowed away in an internal pocket that refused to open. Its cheap plastic zipper looked half melted. Rather than waste time fiddling with it, Kallen simply shoved her fingers through the rotten fabric.
"And, and, as if that wasn't enough shit to deal with, a goddamn Knight of the Round volunteered me to host her in my apartment while she's in Area 11."
A fighting knife and a frag grenade came out of the last pocket.
"The Knight of Nine is sleeping on my fucking COUCH. I do not get to sneeze without the fucking Emperor of Britannia knowing exactly when, where, and how I do it."
The grenades lever hooked over her belt and the knife slithered into her boot.
"So fuck you and your whiny bullshit!"
With a bullish snort Nagata puffed up his chest.
"You know what your problem is? You -"
"Look out!"
Nagata jerked the steering wheel just as he rear-ended the car in front of him. The truck bounced off the motorway guardrail and shot down a cordoned off dirt ramp. It pulverized an orange plastic barricade on its way down, finally coming to a stop by crashing into a stack of pallets.
Head swimming, Kallen winced and rubbed her forehead. Her hand came away bloody. The passenger side airbag hadn't deployed when the truck crashed and she hadn't been wearing a seat belt. A smear of blood - her blood - decorated the epicenter of a large spiderweb crack spanning the windshield.
"Not my smartest move," she grunted, slumped in her seat.
Kallen saw double. Her neck ached horribly. Her stomach roiled and so she threw the door open to spill her guts. Spitting and moaning, Kallen groped behind her for a water bottle. She had downed half of it when Nagata stirred. His airbag seemed to have deployed properly, sparing him from much injury.
"Fucking hell, Nagata, wake up."
She lurched out of her bucket seat and hauled him off the steering wheel by the shoulder.
"Nagata. Nagata! Wake the fuck up! We gotta go!"
He opened his eyes for a brief moment. Kallen screamed in frustration and doused him with the remainder of her bottle. He jolted awake, sputtering and gasping.
"The fuck, what- oh shit, the gas!"
They both froze, wide eyed, and listened for anything out of the ordinary that may precede their painful death by poison gas. A bead of sweat rolled down Kallen's temple as they held their breath.
All was silent. Their fear deflated, if only slightly.
"Well we aren't dead, so I guess it's . . . fine?"
Nagata shrugged.
"I hope so. Let's see if we can get out of here. I don't wanna be around this thing any longer than I have to."
The engine wasn't running anymore. She didn't know if that was a good sign or not but she hoped it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Kallen didn't know much about auto engines, at least not petrol ones, so she just trusted Nagata to figure it out. After slicing the deflated airbag off the steering wheel she searched for her lost rifle. It was wedged up under the where the bottom of the glovebox met the floorboards. She wrenched it out to find the forward sight bent to the side.
"Oh goddamnit."
She wrapped her long fingers around the sight and wrenched it back into place with a sharp metallic squeak. It looked properly aligned again. Mostly. Nagata eyed Kallen's hand warily.
"You . . . doing alright? Looks like you hit your head pretty hard."
She grumbled a non committal answer as she checked the sights alignment. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do for now.
". . . You sure? There's a lot of blood, well, all over your face."
"I'm. Fine. Thank you."
"Oh. Good." He stoically refused to look at her. "Sorry about that shit before we crashed."
'Ass.' She was still pissed, and answered him with the twitch of a slender eyebrow as the purr of the engine returned.
"It's uh, s'been rough since the new Sub-Viceroy got here. She's been pounding us into the fuckin' mud and we're getting pretty desperate. So, uh . . . Sorry. I shouldn't have gotten in your face about it. We good?"
Kallen snorted, temporarily mollified. "Course we are, asshole. Just remember, next time I'm kicking your ass. Actually, I might still kick your ass after we finish with this," She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. Nagata laughed and Kallen settled back into her seat and took a deep breath as the truck.
She was already starting to feel better. Her forehead had stopped bleeding and the dizziness and the twisting nausea had mostly vanished. She fished a napkin out of the cupholder and did her best to smear the blood off her face. It didn't work very well.
They were both startled back into action by a thump on the roof of the truck. It sounded like boots.
"Fuck! Get us back on the road. I'll clear the back of the van." Kallen ordered. The truck lurched into gear and Kallen heard another thump from the back.
The van limped forward, struggling under the heavy load of the poison gas bomb stowed in the back of the van. An unpleasant grinding came from somewhere in the undercarriage, and for a moment, Kallen feared that the van had given up, but it stubbornly powered through though and started chugging along steadily.
What had to be an assault rifle barked and three holes were punched through the driver's side of the cab. Nagata yelped and Kallen swore. Several more bursts followed, but whoever was shooting no longer had a good angle on the cab.
"Motherfucker! How bad?"
Nagata's arm was bleeding. His mouth twisted into a grimace and he grunted through clenched teeth.
"Not bad. I'll live. The back, go."
"Right!" Before she could get through the door, the police cruiser that had been chasing them came screaming down the dirt ramp.
"This is the Royal Knight Police! You are hereby ordered to stop your vehicle at once! If you do not comply then we will continue to fire on you!"
"FLOOR IT!"
Kallen ducked when she heard the thunk - thunk - thunk of pistol rounds smashing into the side of the van. They didn't tear through thankfully. The cruiser pulled up alongside them and Kallen raised her rifle.
"Stop the van immediately! You are in violation of Article Three of the Area 11 Colonial Security Act! Pull over at once!"
"FUCK YOU!"
Kallen punched out the passenger side window with the muzzle of her rifle and dumped its magazine into the cruiser's engine and both driver side doors. The drivers head caught a round and disappeared, filling the car with gore and red mist. Engine ruined and driver dead, the cruiser veered off to the side and smashed into a concrete barrier.
Kallen reloaded and lunged out of her seat, readying herself at the personnel door in the back of the cab. She took a breath and threw the door open. Stalking forward, Kallen saw nothing out of place save for a growing pool of clear liquid at the base of the massive gas capsule. It had slid forward about a foot, colliding with the front of the trailer and bending one of the cylindrical protrusions on the capsules spherical surface. The metal around its base was torn and the same fluid that coated the trailer floor was leaking out of it with a lazy glug - glug - glug. Kallen frowned. Was it the poison? Did it have to be vaporized before it was lethal? She took a deep breath and felt fine. In fact, she couldn't smell anything out of place.
She carefully proceeded, dodging the expanding puddle in the doorway and stuck the tip of her small finger into the liquid. It was thicker than water, but not by much. There was no burning pain or even mild discomfort as it dripped off her skin. She rubbed it between her fingertips before cautiously bringing it to her nose. It didn't smell like anything at all.
'Is this . . . is this baby oil? The fuck?'
The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a haywire signal rushed over her skin. She could hear someone breathing over the loud dullness of the truck. Kallen slid the door shut behind her and moved silently, sweeping the trailer with her rifle. When she rounded the back of the capsule her heart leapt into her throat and she leaned back sharply.
COLT ANACONDA .44 MAGNUM read the side of the chrome barrel currently being shoved into her left eye. She jerked her free eye over to see who got the drop on her and her jaw hit the floor.
"Aw, are you fucking kidding me!"
Looming over her was her bloody boss, Lelouch vi Britannia. He stood, holding a gun to her head and looked so smug that his ego had to be ready to burst.
"Imagine that, just bumping into you like that. Come here often Red?"
His voice floated across her ears lowly, salacious and slow. Kallen knocked his gun away from her face and shoved him back, bristling. A vein in her neck pulsed alarmingly, her rifle creaked and groaned as she once more strangled it in frustration. She was practically foaming at the mouth.
"You, you, such a- you- pistol whipped- I can't- AARRGH!" Kallen threw up her hands in infuriated defeat and Lelouch just laughed. And laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
"Why? Why do you have nothing better to do than stalk me! Christ, you're a prince! Go frolic and do princely things. Go fuck a secretary or oppress a native population or something, away from me! Far, far away! AND WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PISTOL WHIP ME?"
Lelouch invaded her personal space and kallen shifted uneasily, off kilter as she was. The rifle met the floor with a clatter. Lelouch's pistol was out of his hands - she had no idea where it went. He had one hand on her waist and the other braced against the wall by her ear. He leaned in close and purred, a cat toying with a ferociously clawed mouse.
"Stalk you?" Lelouch slowly raked his fingers down from her waist where he dug his thumb into her hipbone, just above the hem of her pants. She swallowed, struggling with the urge to smash his head into a bloody pulp on the trailer wall.
"All these . . . encounters," he nipped at the crook of her neck. His knee wedged itself between her thighs and she grimaced. Determined, Kallen clamped her legs shut in attempt to crush his offending knee. She celebrated a small victory when Lelouch winced. She knotted her fingers into his jacked to shove him off. A dragon stirred in her chest, demanding blood when Lelouch's free hand found her rear. For a fleeting second, she froze. Kallen told herself that it was involuntary, that it was a response to head trauma and exposure to an insufferable jackass. She didn't quite believe herself, but she was too stubborn to even acknowledge that. She was too stubborn to acknowledge a great many things.
"Purely coincidence, I assure you."
A lightning bolt ripped through the length of her spine when his teeth grazed her jaw line. She told herself it was revulsion that made her stomach flip about like it was. His lips brushed past her chin, distressingly near precious territory. She was drowning, gasping for the breath of air that would save her and wrestling with her rising fury.
Her eyelids fluttered mutinously, trying to close of their own accord. She felt every inch of him pressed up against her. She felt his forehead on hers, his nose on hers, his lips . . . so, so close.
'Oh god.'
Lelouch gently traced over the torn skin on her cheekbone. The rapidly clotting would marring her pale face.
"I'm sorry. I didn't get a good look at you until after I'd struck. Will you forgive me Kallen?"
'Oh god, yes.'
Her knees buckled when he said her name.
And then he was gone, just like that.
Just like that, he took the heat with him, leaving her a chilly and frustrated mess. He stood off to the side, in the deepening oil, eyeing the capsule as if nothing had happened. Kallen furiously rubbed the gooseflesh from her neck and stomped over to Lelouch, splashing oil every which way.
"And just what the fuck was all that!"
"Mmm? Oh, some kind of high pressure vessel. I've no idea what might be in it though," that was an outright lie, he had many ideas. He gave her a sidelong look. Casanova was completely gone, dead and buried, replaced by Prince Prig.
'Fantastic.'
Kallen sputtered, hissed, and gurgled. Her slender fingers had just closed around his neck when her radio crackled.
"What the fuck are you doing back there? Is everything alright?"
"Shit!" She fumbled with her radio. "It's fine, everything's fine. The capsule is leaking but its some kind of oil, not poison."
"Wait, what! Shit, okay, so what now? Did we just steal this thing for no goddamn reason? Or is it going to blow up and kill us all?"
"Fuck, I don't know. Just focus on getting us the hell out of the settlement."
"Uh . . . that might take a bit of doing, cause we've got company. Like, company for Baby."
Kallen groaned. This just kept getting worse and worse.
"Oh fuck me. Alright, I'll deploy. How much longer to Shinjuku?"
"About ten minutes, assuming we don't die horribly in the next five."
"Alright, call the others and let them know the in-laws are coming."
She fixed Lelouch with a thousand degree glare.
"Why are you here? And don't fuck around this time, give me a straight answer. Why are following me? Did Cornelia put you up to it? The O.S.I.?" Kallen narrowed her eyes and spat "Nonette?"
Lelouch had that horribly annoying twinkle of mirth in his eyes that he only got when he knew something that someone else didn't.
"Honestly? You rear ended me."
Kallen blinked slowly, working her jaw silently. "You- You can't be serious! A truck rear ends you so you just go hop in it? Without telling the people in it? Are you stupid?"
"Well your driver did crash spectacularly. I thought he might have been injured. Believe me, I'm still going to sue for trauma - both emotional and physical - but at the same time I had to fill my annual quota of good deeds. You know how it goes, karma and all that."
Kallen a flustered look. "Do you ever take anything seriously?"
"Serious things, usually."
A pregnant silence followed. Kallen was contemplating returning her twitching hands to his beautiful neck but her fantasy was promptly disrupted by a slash harken ripping its way through the top left corner of the trailer's ramp. Whoever fired it retracted it quickly, tearing a large hole in the ramp. Kallen and Lelouch lunged behind the Glasgow for cover. The Knightmares behind the van were bellowing and Kallen had to shout over them to be heard.
"If I go out there, are you going to try to stop me?" She screamed in his ear.
Lelouch grabbed her jaw and turned her head sharply. She felt his lips on her ear again.
"Go do what you have to do, that's an order!"
Kallen fluidly transitioned into soldier mode, "Sir!", she tossed her radio to the prince and sprung into Baby's cockpit.
A Britannian attack helicopter was the first casualty of the day. Kallen refused to count the police cruiser she gutted earlier. The knight police were soft and weak. The Britannian military, the Royal Panzer Infantry no less, would provide a challenge. Especially in this rust-bucket. Kallen couldn't stop herself from grinning at the thought.
She launched one of her harkens at the gunship through the gaping hole in the truck's ramp before she launched Baby through the ramp. The gunship was skewered neatly and began tearing itself apart on the way down. The gunships wingman veered off to the side to get away from the red Glasgow. It opened fire vengefully. Nagata did his best to dodge the torrential downpour of blazing tracer fire coming from the heavens. It followed high above, well out of slash harken range. The gunships auto-cannon flashed and bullets ripped through the rain, poorly imitating the storm's sound and fury. The roaring sky smothered the heavy staccato of gunfire and the chop chop of the gunships rotors.
Kallen hauled back on the sticks, moving at full reverse as she guarded the van from the squad of Sutherland's that had deployed while she and Lelouch had been dicking around. She cursed him for being such a horrid distraction as she launched both her harkens at one of the Sutherlands, ripping off an arm and knocking an antenna off the cockpit block.
The Sutherlands, a full squad of five, tapped their brakes, creating some space between them and her. They shifted into a hammerhead formation, a row of three in front of a row of two. They all bounced through a construction zone, churning the now muddy dirt road and spraying pea gravel every which way.
"Come on motherfuckers, let's do this!" Kallen taunted over an open channel.
The Glasgow charged the Britannian line as a bull would, made of rage and violence. That familiar shaking came back, creeping up her right arm like a foul rot. The anger rose in Kallen's chest and she screamed.
While weaving through the hail of gunfire to the best of the aging Glasgow's ability, she launched her slash harkens at the rightmost Sutherland. A direct hit on its blocky waist detonated the unit's energy filler spectacularly.
Using the burning husk as a counterweight, Kallen swung around on her harken's tether to ram a tonfa into the center Sutherland's cockpit block, the one she had grazed earlier. It jerked and thrashed in Baby's arms as the pilot was crushed inside the cockpit. With her free arm, she snatched the assault rifle out of the dead Sutherland's arms.
The remaining pilots found their focus and opened fire. A jerky shove sent the dead frame toppling over, and the rearguard swerve around the wreckage.
A long rifle burst from baby shredded the back of the cockpit of the leftmost Sutherland. Embedding both of her slash harkens into the chest of the hulled Sutherland and reeling them in tight them tight gave Kallen an impromptu shield.
Baby shook under the close range fire from the remaining Sutherlands. Kallen fired off a smoke charge from a tube bolted to the cockpit block, briefly obscuring herself behind a thick cloud of orange smoke.
Of the two remaining Sutherlands, one immediately backed off, spraying through the smoke screen. The Glasgow rocked and rumbled as shrapnel pinged off its armored hide.
She blindly popped off a grenade at the Knightmares firing at her. Falling short, it missed the Sutherland, kicking up a cloud of gravel and dust. Lunging out of the smoke, Kallen rammed the closest Sutherland. She fired her grenade launcher into it's chest at contact range with catastrophic results. The grenade's detonation tore the rifle, the arm holding it, and the front of the Sutherland, into hundreds of pieces of hot shrapnel.
The force of the detonation triggered the Sutherland's auto-ejection protocol. Explosive bolts fired in its torso and the ejection booster ignited, flinging the demolished cockpit block out and away from the battle.
The exhaust from the solid rocket boosters washed over Baby with disastrous effect.
A hellish wave of heat sliced through the Glasgow. The forward facing exterior camera melted. The acrid stench of burning insulation and PCBs stung Kallen's lungs. The edges of the cockpit monitors discolored and blistered under the extreme heat. A deafening blast ripped Baby open, tossing the ruined Glasgow backward. Klaxons wailed and alerts flashed on the dying screens as Kallen felt herself flipping end over end. She strained against the forces throwing her around in the cockpit, but lost in the end. Kallen blacked out, choking on the heat and the smoke, as Baby toppled over and it's Yggdrasil drive detonated.
