Using 'Falcon' instead of Faucon, like Lark for Alouette. Conveys the meaning better. Also the reference.

Tweaked lines from Exec_Flip_Metamorphose.

Rouge frowned. "General…"

"What, again?" Fefnir sighed, turning around to look at the screen that displayed a certain recently-created crater a little over a kilometer away from the city's edge. He shrugged, then turned away, looking only slightly peeved. "Hit 'im again," he ordered, turning back to his console.

"Yes, sir." Her headset conveyed the orders to the gunnery crews without her having to speak aloud. The command and control center was loud enough as it was.

Colbor cleared his throat. While sometimes that was necessary for reploids, when they were caught in sandstorms, here it was very clearly meant to communicate that in General Phantom's absence, the acting operations head of the Zan'ei was obligated to comment on Fefnir's tendency to apply massive amounts of firepower. And mock him when that firepower failed to do anything useful, but to mock one of the Guardians?

Fefnir waved off his careful non-objection. "Yeah, yeah, he'll just pick himself up again, but at least it's still buying us a few minutes."

"Scans show target destroyed," Rouge reported again, even before the smoke cleared.

The crater was now a little deeper, and Omega's pieces were once again scattered all over it.

"Good work," Fefnir told her. It made him feel a little warm, happy glow of pride in his men (and Harpuia's female models, in Spotter Commander Rouge's case), that she could refer to Omega as just 'the target.'

Of course, the words 'target destroyed' were always music to his ears.

Oh, they'd been dismayed enough when Weil's monster appeared, roaring. Parents frightened their children with Omega. Older models told stories to younger ones, too. Weil would probably be disappointed, Fefnir thought, to find out that he wasn't the boogeyman, Omega was. What parent would talk to their kid about Weil, and what made him such a monster? Omega was a big, scary, stomp on you and grind you into the dust scary monster. So, obviously, how X and Zero had kicked its ass made a great story to tell kids. Like the dragon Fefnir was sort of named after.

Omega had roared, and everyone here had tried not to look frightened, but Fefnir could roar too, and roar orders, unlike the mostly-brainless behemoth.

The first time, they'd been relieved and started to celebrate, and Fefnir had to roar at them again to get back to work and not to get their hopes up. A little thing like that wasn't going to keep down Omega for long, they knew Weil had elf technology, even if they didn't know that wasn't the half of it when it came to Omega. Fefnir knew even he probably didn't even know a third of what was up with Omega, and right now he wished he'd done a little more prying, back then. Would be handy to know what he was dealing with, when X wasn't around and he was the one stuck coming up with the plans.

He'd told them to blow Omega up again the first time he'd pieced himself together, and after the third time he'd stopped hearing gasps of dismay.

It had been a couple hours now, and it seemed that the novelty of blowing the God of Destruction to hell had started to wear off for the command staff. Fefnir knew he was getting bored with it. Pity Phantom's trick, whatever it was, hadn't kept Omega down forever, but Omega had the infinite potential system, so what could you do? Fefnir could have thermonuked him, if he'd felt like wasting the hydrogen or fissionables, and rendered Omega down to his molecules instead of scattered, melted shards, but Omega'd still have figured out how to pull himself together.

Anyway, "Of course we can't keep this up forever, and I know that." Bombs ran out, even if they actually had stockpiles now. Harpuia had hit him from orbit a few times, but Omega had already evolved an immunity to lightning, it seemed, so they'd had to start using conventional munitions again. "I just want you guys to keep him down long enough for me to finish going over these orders and operations plans." He sighed, rolling his eyes. "Fight of the century on our doorstep and I'm doing paperwork." Goddammit, where were his siblings when he needed them? This crap was what Harpuia was for.

"…General Fefnir?"

"What?" Couldn't Rouge see he was trying to concentrate?

"Sir… do you mean you're going to fight that thing alone?"

"I'll take some elves with me," although that was as good as going alone, if he had anything to say about it. Even though they'd probably have to use elves, and a ton of them, to disable Omega. Supposedly he'd been fried the last time when Zero and X ripped Aurora out of him, but obviously that wouldn't work now, not when he didn't have the Dark Elf in there to be freed. If he did, it wouldn't be this easy to make the thing go boom with conventional weapons. "Falcon, you'll be in command until someone gets," their ass, "back here."

"Sir," Commander Falcon nodded, acknowledging the instruction. And honor. Harpuia's second-in-command was fairly young, but he had distinguished himself in an attack on a caravan a few years ago enough to justify the expense of upgrading him into a flight-capable body, and he'd risen through the ranks fast after that. You had to respect someone who had taken down heavily-armored mechanaloids with his bare hands after his energy pistol had jammed. "Would a sniper detachment be acceptable?"

"Not if they come close enough a human could spot them. I don't want to have to worry about barbequeing my own troops." At least Falcon hadn't suggested he needed guards or meat shields, but then he dealt with Harpuia, who made it very clear that he did not need help from his troops, and if he did he would order them to provide it. To be fair, it was mostly because he didn't want heroic people putting themselves in danger when he did something that would have been fairly suicidal for someone without Harpuia's decades of combat experience and advanced systems. Fefnir sometimes had the same problem. "Has Judge Biblio managed to dig up that file on Omega's specs and the possible containment measures he and Master X worked out?" In case (for when) Weil and Omega returned.

"Yes, he and Dr. Cerveau are going over it now." Joan reported.

"Let me know when they've got something workable." Fefnir hit send on the two windows he'd been switching off between and stood up. "Commander Falcon, you're in command as of now. I've sent you my orders."

"Sir." The Rekku officer wasn't the only one to salute as he left the room, headed for the nearest teleport pad.

All of them used the Jin'en's salute.

"General Fefnir? We're ready," one of the elves that was waiting for him at the teleporter told him.

"Good. I want all of you to stay out of his reach. Don't try swooping in front of his face to distract him." That was one of the moves the elves in the armies practiced: besides scouting, there were lots of things they could do that didn't mean certain death. And he especially made sure the ones in his army knew that. "Omega can grab you and use your power for himself. The last thing any of us needs is for him to be temporarily invincible." Or who knew what else. He looked at each of them directly as he told them that. Just because they knew they could be called upon to give their lives someday didn't mean they should throw them away cheaply. "Anyone who doesn't make it count will have their name stricken from the honor roll, got me? And if at least half of you aren't alive at the end of the day, you're all getting taken off unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Don't try to tell me you didn't volunteer for this so you could go out in a blaze of glory against the god-damn God of Destruction." Because he hadn't been built yesterday.

Cyber-elves, these ones, didn't live all that long, most of the time. Especially not military models. Most reploids didn't really think about how they would die, but it was almost every day that a cyber-elf wondered if this was the situation where they should use their power.

"…Yes, sir." The elected leader of this group of cyber-elves seemed downcast.

"…If you die today, you'll die for a good cause," he told her, since he didn't want to burst their bubble, "but that cause is protecting the people of Neo Arcadia and saving their lives. Keeping people alive is the whole point. If you forget that…" then there wasn't any point. If they thought their lives were worthless, then how precious was something of you spent zero Zenny on it? Crystals, these days. "If you forget that, then I've failed." Oh, it was tempting to think of them as floating appliances. Easier that way, on people who got seriously injured. On people with important, urgent projects, like tower maintenance. They might not be as smart as the first generation, thinking took energy, but they weren't stupid. They were people, even if they weren't as powerful as the originals, as Aurora and the dark elves. "As a Guardian." As Aurora's friend.

Because these little floaty things were based on her, just like all reploids were based on his father. And they'd been building reploids knowing they were almost certainly going to end up dead, or worse, during the Maverick Wars.

Sometimes, all you could do was make it count, and hope that you'd made enough difference that someday, people would have options. Wouldn't have to die so young and with so few choices made.

"We won't let you down, sir."

"Better not," he growled, looking at each of them, making eye contact like they were people (even if he couldn't make out their eyes on the glow), and triggered the teleport.

It made him grin, to see that he'd landed on one of those fragments of white armor. He might have gone on his way to step on a few more (like the game of avoiding stepping on cracks, although in this case he'd love the chance to break Weil's back) as he headed closer to the place Omega'd been standing, where he was most likely to pull himself together. Or be pulled together, if Weil was sending elves. Fefnir's could counter their efforts if he did, as long as they weren't baby elves.

As much as he liked Sodom and Gomorrah, he was going to need bigger guns for this.

Unlike Harpuia and Phantom, he wasn't built with a focus on agility, and unlike Leviathan he didn't have the luxury of dodging all over the damn place. He used heavy cannons, and that meant he needed secure footing so recoil didn't mess up his aim. Obviously that would put him at a disadvantage: he'd take a lot of hits, he couldn't avoid that, so he needed to reduce the damage from those hits, which meant armor, which would slow him down more.

Also, to do damage to Omega faster than Omega could hurt him, bigger guns.

His father had teleported armors to himself on the battlefield. He'd done one better for them.

Passcode: "The strength of my burning passion shall compel the divine mission!"

Exec_Metamorphose – Fefnir extracting: Armed Phenomenon Mode

It was always disconcerting, to have most of his body teleported out from around him and then his braincase and other important bits installed into his other body as it appeared around him…

"Together, we shall wear the necklace of steel and protect all from the beasts possessed by insanity."

Exec_withMethod_Metamorphose - Fefnir and Elpis extracting: Divine Phenomenon Mode

His armed phenomenon form dissolved into stuff that looked vaguely like electronic code or modeling, like when Axl had done his thing, only with weird symbols mixed in instead of pure lines and shapes. Judging from his optics, which were still intact, he was being lifted several meters higher off the ground.

Of course, he barely noticed that, not next to, "Aurora?"

"I shall wear these chains so that we may protect all from the beasts possessed by hatred…" She was still coding this, adjusting his new form, but she still sent him a flash of apology, that she would respond but she couldn't, not until this was finished, or else he'd end up with something that wasn't good enough.

There was so much he wanted to say to her. And ask her. Like where the hell she'd been. And what the hell she was thinking, showing up on a battlefield with Omega, after what he'd done to and with her last time.

He would have yelled at her to go away right the hell now, except if she just dumped him mid-edit like this he'd be scrap metal, and he knew she wouldn't do that to him. Even if his death would be much, much better than her getting caught by Omega again. Both for the war and because damn it, hadn't she suffered enough?

He hadn't seen much of her after Weil took her – she'd disappeared as far as he knew after Zero had used her to cure the virus a second time, ending the Second Elf War. Weil's war. He hadn't asked X what he'd done with her, because it was safer for everyone that way.

"Through me courses the power of the gods, protecting those who are precious – I will this, never forgetting that love! From the ends of the universe I summon and command the power and understanding to protect all from the beasts possessed by madness!"

Alright.

Well, he'd been modeled after a dragon from the start. Now, instead of two cannons, he had two more fire-breathing heads. Wings, that wouldn't actually keep him in the air without a little tweaking of physics that Aurora's program had already done – it didn't matter what the laws of physics said, when the Mother Elf decreed otherwise.

He might have wondered at the love part if he hadn't known that what Aurora did was half willpower. And it took emotion for people to throw themselves at the universe and demand that it bend to their will. Anger, hatred, grief… elves would sacrifice themselves, would do things for lots of reasons, just like anyone else. But the strongest emotion there was? The one that would make people keep going in the face of impossible odds, or even when they knew it was impossible, that it just didn't work that way, that the world just wasn't a place that would let them save everyone and have their dreams?

He'd known his father. He'd seen what made him force himself to keep going, just for the sake of a single precious life, just so that someone would have tried to save them, even when it was hopeless.

He'd known X. He'd survived the Massacre of Dominica because X hadn't been able to leave him there, even though he'd shouted at him to, knowing the only reason his com wasn't jammed was that Weil had wanted X to come. To die.

So he knew the power of love had nothing to do with human hormonal fooling around. It was the reason to fight.

So Aurora invoking it… explained why this form was so powerful (Damn, he felt like Godzilla), and it was flattering that she still remembered him, still could care about him even though he'd epically failed at protecting her, but they'd both changed. It had been so long.

There was no way she could remember his stupid crush, that stupid promise to protect her she'd been right to laugh like hell at him for (she should have been untouchable, figuratively as well as literally). Just… They'd both been completely different people, back then.

And since it was human knights that slew dragons to rescue princesses, it was definitely a bad omen to think of it that way. "Get out of here!"

"Phantom's still sabotaging Omega to distract his infinite potential system as much as he can. I know where X is, but he's busy. …And it's good to see you."

"Good to see you too, but seriously, Aurora, get the hell…" All of a sudden, instead of gradually drawing itself together Omega's body was suddenly intact. "…Never mind." Too late. If she left his body, it would be easier for Omega to grab her. "Stay here." In this body, behind several layers of very nice alloy.

Oh, Omega wanted to roar in his face? Two could play at that game.

And now Fefnir roared fire.

"It won't stay that easy," Aurora cautioned him – she knew how Omega 's systems worked, he'd already be adapting to a new threat, especially one that had softened Omega's armor up enough Fefnir had just lunged forward and easily clawed his face off, tackling him to the ground in the process,

"Good, because this is fucking embarrassing," Fefnir thought on her as he bit Omega's arms with his two new sets of teeth and pulled. They hadn't had the resources for targeted massive overkill bombardments like this during the second elf war, true, and even if they had Weil would have ordered Omega to get out of there, used elves, or sent a program to speed up his evolution or something else to render Fefnir's favorite tactic and X's preferred one useless. Still, it had been almost impossible for X to injure Omega and make it stick for more than a second, back then. So, even though he really didn't want to complain about things being easy for once, it made him a little embarrassed on his father's behalf that Fefnir was making it look so easy at the moment.

Now that Omega didn't have the dark elf and Fefnir did.

Payback was a bitch, but revenge was sweet and titaniummy.

Once he peeled Omega like a grapefruit and rendered the insides extra crispy before anyone could get a good look at them, he'd get to do it all over again.

Maybe getting stuck watching Neo Arcadia hadn't been such a bad deal after all.

Kaiju FTW. I could swear there's an actual dragon kaiju with wings and three heads (but sadly not red), but I can't remember the name off the top of my head.