"Knightmares, launch!"
Three outdated Lancelot units take to the skies. One is painted white and gold, on is blue and black, and the third is blood red.
Kallen adjusts her seat forward a bit more. The Guren's seat was more like a motorbike's, while this one was like a car's chair. It was taking some getting used too.
"All Knightmares clear. Submerging." Gregor's voice comes through the radio.
L2 acknowledges. "Be at the rendezvous in three hours, and good luck."
Gregor chuckles. "You too. Sub out."
Kallen keys her microphone. "So, how come Gregor doesn't interact with the crew much? I barely saw him on the sub at all."
"He resists making attachments. He used to be a Brittanian commander, up there with me in terms of planning. His troops though, they didn't follow his orders because they thought he was insane, and they we slaughtered by Indian forces. He then lost control and took out all the remaining forces on the battlefield by himself. Once he was done, he resigned and decided to not make decisions that could end people's lives right before I started the Black Knights. While I was starting Zero Requiem, I met him and recruited him. He was my backup plan. He stuck with us these last twelve years out of a sense of duty, but he hasn't made friends of either of us."
Kallen can almost hear L2 shrug over the radio. "It's not my place to force him to be in close proximity with the crew."
Suzaku's voice pops in. "Sounds like an interesting guy."
"Why do you think I noticed him?" L2 says in a cheerful manner. "But enough of that. You two remeber why we're here?"
"We need to take out a radar tower, and defend the sub as it docks and lets off its cargo." Kallen says. "What is that cargo, by the way?"
"You'll see."
Kallen sighs.
"Tower in sight." Suzaku says calmly. "I'm going in."
The gold and white Lancelot unit surges forward, closely followed by the red and the black Knightmares.
Kallen's radio crackles as it tries to intercept the enemy's transmissions. "Wha... Now of all... Contact... Get me a line to... It's the white knight!"
"Hey! How come I don't get a cool name!" Kallen pouts in her cockpit for a fraction of a second before she was forced back to reality by a missile narrowly missing her.
She dives at the offending launcher, one of those that are mounted on swivels. It attempts to fire another missile, but Kallen puts up the shields in an instant, deflecting the blast back down and destroying the defensive structure.
Kallen lifts her head up to see a shadow passing over her upper screen. "What is that?"
L2's voice comes out more ragged than normal. "It's the Britannian flagship. What's it doing here? I thought..."
Suzaku fills the comm silence. "Worry about it later! Right now we have more immediate problems!"
L2 snaps around just in time to cut an airplane into bits as it flies past. "Airplanes? Why aren't they using Knightmares?"
Kallen easily dashes through a veritable cloud of enemies, trailing explosions behind her. "Doesn't matter, they're attacking us, so we take them out."
Suzaku grabs a passing jet, ripping its left wing off and sending it into a spiral towards the target tower. The tower is enveloped by a sizable pink explosion as the plane detonates.
"What? Is that sakuradite?" Kallen ducks a plane trying to ram her from behind.
"Are these planes fitted with sakuradite cores?" L2 mutter over the radio. "If so, flying Knightmares would be at a disadvantage..."
"Lelouch! Watch out!"
L2 looks up just in time to see a plane dive bombing him from above. Having no time to dodge, he raises a sword.
The plane splits neatly in half as it comes in contact with the sword. L2 had planned that part. What he had forgotten is that the plane was still going to all directly at him.
The Knightmare and plane crash to the ground a second before going up in a sakuradite cloud.
"Lelouch!" Kallen dives down to the crash only to be slammed to the side. She looks at her diagnostics and finds something had hit her Knightmare's leg and almost sheered it off.
Looking in the direction of the projectile, she finds a tank with a float system, hovering a few feet off the ground. It starts adjusting to aim at her again.
"Oh, no you don't." She growls, and dashes over to the tank.
Suzaku flys into the hole he had created in the tower. The tower is hollow, and he can see catwalks stretching all the way from the top to the bottom.
"L2, I'm inside. I'm heading to the top to get the equipment."
There is no response.
"Kallen, is L2 alright?"
Still no response.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
Suddenly, the arm of his Knightmare falls off. He tries to fly away, but his float system gets tangled in the catwalks.
Suzaku starts to get a creeping feeling. He pulls the eject lever, and he can hear the pins release, but the seat remains in place.
"Trapped? Again?"
Outside of the Knightmare, a man with Geass eyes grins down at a fully intact Knightmare as he spins an illusion around the unknowing man.
o-o-o-o
Kallen growls in frustration as the tank dodges sideways. It may not have much three dimensional movement, but it was still fast enough to dodge Kallen's slightly clumsy swipes of her sword.
"Who thought it was a good idea to get rid of the Varus cannon on the production model?" She grumbles.
The tank fires another shell at her, this time aimed at her inside her escape pod.
She grabs the shell and tosses it aside.
"Jeez, I've had all sorts of things attack me, but firing metal slugs at a Knightmare? What are they thinking?"
She deploys her spinners (she was honestly surprised Knightmares still used them, but they were convenient) and lands, crouching down to hide between two piles of rubble.
The enemy unit is still on her radar. She watches it slowly approach her, then realizes she should probably power down to hide.
The outer screens power down, and she gets a horrible sense of being trapped in the cockpit. She scrambles to find the eject lever, but stops short of pulling it. Instead, she presses against the hatch and pops it open a tiny fraction.
Through the gap, she can see the underside of the tank, slowly rotating in place above her, searching. The downdraft is powerful enough to almost knock her back into the Knightmare and she has trouble not letting to door slam open.
"Lelouch, know would be a good time-"
Someone looks over the side of the tank and makes eye contact with her. The woman on the tank sneers at her.
"So, that's where the little rat was hiding."
The silver haired woman's eye lights up.
o-o-o-o
L2 climbs out of the wreck of his Knightmare. His clothes are shredded and burnt, but his flesh had already regenerated to its normal color.
"I wonder if this is how C2 felt when she was burned at the stake." He mumbles. "Probably. But it's not like I'm going to ask her that anytime soon."
"Ask who what?"
L2 snaps his head up to see a man standing before him, a look of contempt plastered across his face.
"It's none of your business."
The man grins. "Is that right."
L2 pulls out his pistol and aims it at the man. "I have a suspicion that this will not end well for one of the two of us. I'm going to do my best to make sure that it's you who ends up dead."
"Read a thesaurus lately, hmm? Well, L2, you've picked quite the opponent." The man tosses his cape backwards with a flourish. "I am Hibiki Tetsuo, and I will be your opponent!"
A plane is knocked out of the sky by a flying metal shell, and it lands right next to L2. He looks at it dispassionately. "Right. I seem to have a slight advantage though, in that I'm immortal."
The Hibiki's grin doesn't falter. "And I'm at the stage where I can take your code, killing you instantly."
L2's eyebrows shoot up. "Geass user? So we were right."
Hibiki shakes his head. "Yes, Geass users. But do you know where we are? We're not at headquarters, nor are we anywhere important as you so believed. No, we're at a very special location designed to trap Black Assassins." He raises a bazooka-like tube. "It seems like it worked, don't you think?"
o-o-o-o
"So, what's the plan?"
Tamaki paces back and forth in front of his boss. His bosses' boss still isn't back, and until he gets back, nothing could get done.
"You've already asked about a thousand times, Tamaki. Have patience."
Tamaki slams his fist into a crate, cracking the wood. "We've been here for days now. I could've hunted down every one of those rats by now, but no, I'm stuck here babysitting you."
"If you wish to leave, I'm not going to stop you." The man leans backwards against a currently unmarked crate.
Tamaki looks over at the man. "I'm not stupid. If he gets word-"
A woman steps out of the shadows. "Excuse me. You have a visitor." She says to the man.
"Send them in."
Another woman enters the chamber a few moments later. She glares around the room as if it was personally insulting her.
"I presume that you are-"
"No need for introductions." The man says. "State your business."
"I have come to lend my aid."
The man crosses his arms. "I already have a skilled assassin in my employ. Why would I need another? Especially one so... fresh."
She pulls a file out of her handbag and tosses it to him. "On that is a copy of the data I took from the Black Assassins when I got off their sub. You'll find it will be very useful in finding them."
"And how would that be?"
"Detailed schematics for their submarine. Countermeasures for their cloaking device. A virus specifically designed for their system. It's all there."
The man thumbs through the pages, at one point pulling out a flash drive before closing the file again. "What's to keep me from killing you now and keeping all this information for myself?"
The woman laughs. "That's all the written data. Unless you can read the unwritten notes in my head, all that information is useless." She twirls another USB stick on her finger. "Also, killing me would e such a waste of resources."
Tamaki rolls his eyes. "Oh come on. We already have the Black Assassins on a rope. Right now they should be being beaten to a pulp by the rest of the order."
The woman turns to him. "The order has never shown any real competency before. Why do you trust them now?"
Tamaki sneers. "It's because I whipped them into shape. They won't let anyone escape this time, or else their going to have their souls ripped out and fed to-"
"Now, now Tamaki. No need to go spilling secrets we don't need to reveal. Although," He chuckles. "I dare say that she already knows."
The woman grins.
Tamaki grunts and turns back to the door.
"So, do we have a deal?" the woman asks.
The man nods. "We will hire you on in return for your information. It's subject to approval by the boss, but it should be fine."
The woman stops twirling the flash drive and puts it in her pocket.
"Welcome aboard, Rakshata." The man says with an evil smile. "It will be a pleasure working with you."
