Soldier of OZ: Walker's Account

Chapter 81 – Failure of Responsibility

"Who was it who said, 'You'll never see my ass marching in one of those silly parades,'?" The question came from Flight Officer Tsujimoto, who was leaning back in a chair among the now empty reviewing stands in Place Guillaume II, in the historic center of Luxembourg City.

Flight Lieutenant Kent stared back at her from his own chair in the row ahead, turning to face her while keeping his boots propped on the row ahead of him. "I don't recall saying that." Kent cleared his throat. "I was riding, not marching."

"And there's a difference?"

"In riding boots there is," Kent interjected sharply, scowling at her in offense.

The pilots and officers of the First Reconnaissance Battalion, the most famed and most infamous unit in the whole of the OZ Space Mobile Suit Troops, had not all remained in Luxembourg City after the day's celebrations in honor of the new World Nation Head of State. Most had followed their machinery back to military airstrip at Findel International, the battalion's current home while they remained on standby. Others remained in the city to capitalize on their fame and reputation for having started a war, and won, in Kent's humble opinion as a recent addition to the unit.

"Like I said—Brussels was our Waterloo. 'Tis no matter what we do now," he nearly sang.

Nabiki leaned forward and rested her arms on her white trousers. "What's Waterloo?"

Kent gave her a look of heavy scorn. He still had it on his face when their squadron commander found them. Ogasawara Emi had already taken off her uniform's coatee and was hanging it, along with her white cape, over one shoulder. Kent glanced up at her from his chair, only to catch her sheathed sword as she tossed at him.

"You two missed the Lord Protector's speech to parliament," she announced, looking down at them.

"With all due respect to you and the commander-in-chief, so what?" Kent asked, inspected the katana with one eye. "Did he say anything unexpected?"

Emi looked like he was about to rebuke him, but instead sat down near his propped up foot. "No, no particularly. But he is the undisputed sovereign of Earth and the allied colonies."

"Aye, no one's disputin' that," he replied, becoming particularly Estuary English for a moment. "What he'd talk about? Give us the highlights."

Emi gave an annoyed sigh, directed at them at least, and dropped the rest of her uniform onto an empty chair. As she began to unbutton her white dress blouse, she spoke. "Mostly about how bad Relena Peacecraft had screwed all of us now that the White Fang is a threat. And how he, or we, are the only ones capable of saving Earth Sphere."

Kent exchanged a look with Nabiki. "'Probably had to hear it in person," he offered.

"It's hard to tell how much of it he actually believes," she speculated.

"Isn't it always like that with politicians?" he wondered.

"Whatever the case, the gist of it is correct. There's no Princess Relena to pretend the threat isn't real or its misplaced, no Foundation to pull the strings. We're officially out of breathing space. Dermail Catalonia's dead, and we don't have years to form another ruling clique that can control the government. Our little coup has brought the ugly truth to light: the Assembly doesn't get to choose Treize, because there's no one left."

Kent nodded at her appraisal of the situation. "Oooh, Treize-sama, you're so wise! Whatever you say, Treize-sama," Nabiki cooed mockingly.

"Not that this political crisis particularly changes the job," she mumbled. Her expression softened and her eyelids lowered. "Now that the factional warfare has ended, we get to count the bodies and assess the damage, but the White Fang isn't going to wait. Reconciliation…"

"Reconciliation is going to be an ugly, unpleasant bitch," Kent declared. Emi gave him a mildly disapproving look, which he made clear to enjoy.

"He's right," Nabiki chirped.

"I'm aware of that, thank you," Emi growled. The implication was clear: the exact details aside, the First Recon Battalion were commonly held to have fired the first shots in the Treizist revolt. And if she wasn't already the visible leader of the battalion, a parade through Luxembourg had made sure she was now. Visibly irritated at the situation, she rose to her feet and began

"Where you going?" Nabiki called out.

"Where do you think? To try and fix the goddamn army." She left the rest of her uniform sitting on the chair. "And don't go anywhere!" she snapped at them as cleared the rows.

The two of them exchanged looks. "Well that was a surprise," Kent concluded before relaxing back in his chair. Nabiki was staring at him; he stared back until he realized her look was a further inquiry. "Oh, I just thought she'd wear a bra for the occasion. Fancy clothes for a fancy event. But I guess a girl like her needs a lot of support."

Nabiki remained frozen for a few seconds laughter before bursting out into laughter and pushing him back into his chair until both he and it toppled into the row behind him.

II

The unexpected military success of the White Fang—disaffected Colonial Treizists who turned their anti-Reomefeller Foundation revolt into a war on Earth itself—led them to become the dominant naval power in Outer Space. With their successful seizure of the new super-battleship Libra and the destruction of the fortress Barge, none could deny their newfound advantage over the increasingly strained OZ Space Forces, itself scattered across Earth Sphere in the face of the Treizist revolt.

The year is After Colony 195. In a desperate bid to for their own lives, isolated survivors of OZ's 2nd Aeropace Division, Space Mobile Suit Troops, throw themselves at an ostensibly unarmed colony in Libra's warpath: L1-C-00421. Having narrowly cheated death in the face of overwhelming enemy superiority, they turned their gambit into an attempt to rally other survivors with a new, impossible mission: force the White Fang to surrender their new flagship.

Space Colony C-00421's seizure by barely a squadron worth of Taurus troops happened so abruptly that even the ultimatum issued by Flight Lieutenant O'Niall had yet to reach its intended recipients. Safely behind its picket ships, Libra continued in its slow transfer into its new orbit, its skeleton crew feeling particularly safe.

When he arrived at Quinze Quarante's stateroom in Libra's central block, Lieutenant Colonel Sedici was still grinning from ear to ear. Combined with his muscular frame, it was almost enough to unnerve Quinze. "Party Leader."

"You've had your fun, Jarilo, stop teasing me and take a seat," Quinze grumbled with affection as he floated away from his desk and towards a small sitting table closer to the door.

Sedici floated to the empty chair, still smiling. "I wasn't aware I was teasing."

"If Zechs calls me Quinze in public, I think our navy chief of staff can get away with not calling me 'party leader' in the privacy of my own quarters."

Sedici found this amusing and laughed a little louder than Quinze was comfortable with. "Fair enough, Mr. Quarante."

He shot him a look.

"Quinze," he corrected himself. "Quinze. It's been a long road, hasn't it?"

"Longer for some of us then others," he pointed out.

Sedici sobered a little. "Now, you can't hold it against me that I was born ten years too late to have been in the Colonial Liberation Organization, can you? If it were up to me…"

"No, of course not," he chided him, sitting down himself. "On the contrary, I envy you. Your generation is the future of space habitation. You'll be the vanguard of the struggle after we old men—Barton, Long, myself—have gone."

"That's a very dreary way to put it."

"Dreary and true. Maybe I can't speak for the others, but this… this is my last war." Quinze exhaled deeply, and to Sedici, his skeletal stature almost seemed to shrink. "When they write me into the history books, this is where the narrative will end. Possibly where it'll begin," he announced dryly.

Sedici was grinning again. "You caught Treize Khushrenada's speech?"

"The gist of it, yes."

"And?"

Quinze's already narrow eyelids thinned. "And I'm grateful Earth's leader still holds us in so little esteem," he told Sedici plainly. "It could be a lot worse."

"I say 'bring it on' to that." His large frame leaned forward against the table. "We have Libra, much of the fleet and its nuclear inventory. And we have mobile dolls and a Gundam. If you'll allow me the bravado, what do they have?"

"Of course," Quinze muttered.

"Half of the fleet, and the Mobile Suit Troops, bled white from infighting. Relena Peacecraft did us a favor."

Quinze rested his chin on his left hand. "I can't dispute your reasoning." He blinked. "You do know Treize himself better than I do, after all these years. You don't suppose he might…"

Sedici's bushy eyebrows raised. "Might what?"

"…let his self-inflated sense of chivalry get the better of him?"

He clenched his jaw and leaned back. "What? Put the whole of Earth Sphere on the line for the sake of a duel between him and the supreme commander?" He paused. "I don't think it's actually possible for him to do so."

"No, probably not," Quinze agreed. Even Treize Khushrenada, even today, can't bypass the entire military leadership of the World Nation Armed Forces on a whim. Even if there were some guarantee our fleet wouldn't just unload every last thermonuclear weapon in our possession on him and anyone in the vicinity. "We're getting ahead of ourselves anyway, it's still a long road to Earth's doorstep."

Sedici was smirking yet again. "Not that long."

"And where is he, by the way?"

"The supreme commander? The lead operations room, where else?"

Quinze could picture the much younger man standing on the floor-mounted information displays, staring at the unchanging video feed of Earth. "Of course. Then I should return to the bridge. Join me when you've finished your debriefings."

"I will. Though if we want the supreme commander to take a more day-to-day role, maybe we ought to consider how he's presented."

Quinze looked confused, a rare sight for Sedici. "Excuse me?"

"You called him Zechs," he pointed out.

Quinze's eyes widened very briefly. "I did, didn't I? Well, I suppose that's why we have privacy after all." He tried to discomfort. "Why did you come here in such a good mood, Sedici?"

Sedici's smirk faded. "Right. I thought you'd like to be the first person to know, after myself anyway: Libra is now officially fully operation, sir."

Quinze raised his thin eyebrows. "One hundred percent?"

"The engineering, power plant and systems divisions wouldn't use those terms, but yes, practically speaking. The reduced list of final preparations were finished earlier today. We're now officially in our space trials."

Quinze ignored Sedici's qualifiers and gave a short, nasally laugh. "That's very good! I'm sure a military man like Commander Millardo will be pleased to hear that too."

"Though we are still waiting on the rest of our planned complement from Luna," Sedici reminded him.

"Of course, of course," Quinze replied, his good mood unaffected. "Don't look so worried, Jarilo. The hard part—this so-called 'battleship'—is finished. If we can effectively launch Libra, no force in Earth Sphere can stop us, both militarily and logistically. Mustering the troops won't be an issue."

Sedici gave a more restrained half-grin. "Speaking of which, I wanted to ask how you'd like me to break the news to Forrestal."

"Forrestal?"

"Commander of the cruiser Thebe. About not taking delivery of the new mobile dolls."

"Of course, Forrestal. Well, the Thebe is practically the flagship of the forward fleet, why shouldn't expect to have better mobile dolls?" Sedici raised his eyebrows. With a thin hand, Quinze gestured at him to lower them. "Tell him deployment of the initial run is behind held up at Marius Crater."

"And that's the truth?"

"Partially, yes." Quinze's lip twisted. "He needn't be bothered with the specifics, you know how navy men can be, hung up on details."

"Do I?" Sedici echoed with an irreverent shrug when the stateroom's talkback crackled to life with a reverberating one.

"Bridge to the Party Leader and Lieutenant Colonel Sedici. We've just received a transmission from the frontline."

"Sedici here, what is it?"

"Sir…sirs, you'll really want to see this in person."

The two men exchanged guilty looks. "Uh oh," Sedici offered.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Quinze insisted as he carefully turned for the door.

III

"You're know there's not anything you can do about, right?"

Flight Lieutenant Walker turned to Flight Lieutenant Kiest-Lang, his angular eyebrows raised in surprise. He wasn't sure how to respond at first.

"About L1-C-00421," she added, as if reminding him.

"Is that what I look like?" he asked, a little embarrassed. "I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point, I began to think that…whenever something was going wrong, somehow I was involved. Not tell myself that, at least, not always. It was more…instinctual than that."

Kiest-Lang stared at him. The First Recon Battalion may have messed him up pretty bad after all. She cleared her throat. "There's a formal statement from His Excellency repudiating them, 'a handful of desperate soldiers acting without orders', and OZ's position is clear. We can't have such blatant use of human shields even with the White Fang."

"Of course," he muttered, hands together as he sat. "It seems like the enemy has demonstrated a particular ruthlessness, massacring naval shipbuilding personnel and annihilating an entire space division with barely any prisoners, but they haven't targeted civilians. At least not in a deliberate fashion."

"Well, I'm sure the White Fang will come up with some brutally effective solution to the problem." She arched her back briefly and stretched her arms over her head, her uniform's sleeves wrinkling. "After all, just look whose leading them."

Walker visibly twitched. Kiest-Lang felt herself turn red and was ruminating apologizing when he spoke. "The Lightning Count was always very effective," he announced, briefly playing with his blouse sleeves.

"Do you think you'd do it?" She crossed her arms over her chest. "I mean, do you think you'd be capable of that?"

In his mind's eye, a red mobile armor crashed through the intersecting streets of a space colony, sinking an entire city block into a ruinous cloud of dust and smoke. Highly focused beam fire cut through entire buildings as if they were thin sheets of aluminum plating. He separated his hands and he heard himself ask, "Excuse me?"

Kiest-Lang's response was preempted by a musical chime coming out of her tunic: still in surprise, she felt around her waist before fishing out her slate-shaped mobile from underneath uniform's plastron and staring at the screen. "Shit."

"Orders?"

"What are we, a militia?" She winced. "Sorry, sorry. I'm just surprised. Contact of mine from the Fourth Division, looks like they're calling up all the pilots in three companies, including mine."

"They?" Walker asked again.

"Looks like the Space Navy. They still have the bulk of the Leo Troops outside of the Colonial Militia, and I'm still a Leo pilot technically," she said with a half-grin. "I need to get back to Luxembourg, before Nene makes a run for it."

Walker couldn't tell if she was joking. "Then good luck if I don't see you again," he told her gravely, sticking out a hand.

"You might still if you get tired of being in Treize Khushrenada's retinue," she offered with a shrug before taking his thin hand in hers. "You too," she added quickly.

With Kiest-Lang gone, Walker tried to make his way back to that retinue, knowing that the new Lord Protector would probably still be entertaining questions from the press following his inaugural speech, at least until he left Brussels. At this rate, I might actually beat Kalin back to Luxembourg, he speculated as another officer came running after him.

"Ah, Mr. Zhou, what can I do for you?" He found he was beginning to like Treize Khushrenada's wartime secretary, even if he had been appointed to that task by the Romefeller Foundation. "Did another E.U. lawmaker call doing Ms. Shion's bidding?"

Flight Officer Zhou stopped in front of him, appearance immaculate as usual. "No, sir. Well, actually, yes sir, but we're managing it. I was looking for you specifically—we have a call from the Military Commissariat at Melsbroek AFB, apparently, they have something Oswald Walker himself needs to see. To be honest, it's a little bit out of my area of expertise."

Well, if they're using my given name, it must be serious. "Then I assume it's the contents of one of those strategic airlifters left on the tarmac that we saw when we came in, some delivery of sensitive materiel that deserves the attention of no less than Treize Khushrenada's chief engineer?" he asked, leaning towards him with a grin.

Zhou looked surprised. "How did you know?"

He leaned back. "Just a good guess."

"Would you care to guess who was calling?" Zhou offered.

"I really don't know anyone in Military Commissariat in Brussels. I was a truly incompetent spy."

IV

"So, OZ Space Forces is using this colony as a shield—but the White Fang hasn't done anything about it. Somehow we've got to deal with the OZ forces first!"

"And you're sure about this, Quatre?"

"If what you're saying is correct, than that's Heero in Wing Zero. If so, the inside of that colony is safe—we need to secure the space around it."

"Yes but…these numbers. They're unconfirmed reports that multiple Mobile Doll companies are still being deployed by both sides, and your Gundam isn't tuned for space combat yet. It'll be suicide if you go up against those alone!"

"I'm still going to fight."

"Quatre…fine, then. I'll get the attention of those Virgo troops and leave the support to you!"

"Wait, what? That's crazy, Ms. Noin, I can't let you go out alone!"

"Both sides in this fight have pilots from Lake Victoria, pilots I trained! This might sound crazy, but maybe I can persuade them to see it from our side!"

"...Very well then, leave the support to me!"

The loss of Space Fortress Barge and many of Luna's military bases has dealt a lethal blow to OZ Space Forces. Formerly the lead power of Outer Space, its depleted Space Mobile Suit Troops have no place to hide from the White Fang and its hostile Colonial revolt, and now find themselves isolated. With the hope that the rest might reach Earth, a few survivors made a desperate last stand at Colony C-00421.

Flight Lieutenant O'Niall had gotten most of that conversation. In any other circumstance, the reappearance of Lake Victoria's Lucrezia Noin, the second most high-profile desertion since the Revolutions, would've been fascinating. Now it was too late; one Gundam forcibly invaded the colony torus through the bracing arm's interior and was exchanging cannon fire with his Taurus troops. Another Gundam had apparently been lying dormant outside the government quarter in the direction of the animal habitat zone, past the traveling circus troop, and was exchanging gatling fire with both the mobile suits and support vehicles.

O'Niall couldn't begin to imagine how it'd come to this. He'd thought they'd all be destroyed, certainly, but by two Gundams?

The bandaged flight officer was holding onto her normal suit's helmet with one hand and feeling the red-stained spot on her head with the other. "The first Gundam closely matches the design of the one that destroyed Colony L1-E-063 in September, the copy of Unit Zero-One. It and its pilot, Quatre Rebaba Winner, were captured by the navy and delivered to testing grounds on Luna, but escaped during the Treizist revolt. The second Gundam is identical to the Unit Zero-Three that first appeared in southeast England at the start of Operation 'M', complete with a previously-seen configuration and load-out."

O'Niall held his helmet in both hands and blinked passively. Wow, do I know how to pick them. A few months ago, I would've gotten a posthumous promotion for finding two Gundams. "I see," he said.

"The formal statement from Diekirch regarding our actions…" the pilot to her left began.

"That's all right, John. If you'll forgive the opinion, I'm starting to think Colonel Khushrenada might be responsible for many of our…current dilemmas, and will review his statement at a future date," O'Niall muttered softly.

The bandaged F/O gave a half-smile. "So then, sir?"

O'Niall looked down at the helmet he was clutching. Despite the rumble of artillery in the distance, when there wasn't a loud explosion from the Gundams carving up the colonial landscape, he could still hear the voice over the small earpiece inside. "The Second Division will never surrender! You hear me you Colonial sons of bitches? You'll have to kill every last one of us! Long Live Earth, and long..."

With a gloved finger, he pressed the mechanical switch and ended the recording before tossing the helmet aside. It bounced against the concrete several times before he could no longer hear it. "Well, it's not a bad place to die," he offered calmly. "I mean, it could've been a ditch in Colorado."

John nodded slowly. The F/O to his right was still feeling her bandages.

"Maybe those two Gundams will slow the White Fang down," John speculated.

"If they're not on their side," she countered.

"Oh, I doubt that," O'Niall announced, tightened the straps of his normal suit over his portly build. "The one thing I've learned in Outer Space is that the only thing these Colonials hate more than us is each other. The White Fang is a military force—the Gundams are a military problem. Sooner or later…" he trailed off.

He looked at them again and smiled broadly. "You know, eleven Taurus troops, half of their pilots injured, took a whole space colony for OZ. Not bad for this lot, eh?"

John held back a giggle. O'Niall reached over and patted him over his shoulder with a thin hand. "Well then, I think it's time: let's go get killed. The whole White Fang Navy couldn't do the job, so they sent two Gundams instead," he declared.

"Because the Second Aerospace Division does not surrender?" she asked as John grasped O'Niall's arm back.

"Oh, I don't fucking know. It's Lucrezia Noin's problem now."

While the remains of the 2nd Aerospace Division made their last stand, word of their notorious act was just then reaching Libra, to the surprise of its crew. Their desperation shocked even those who had just recently defected from the Space Mobile Suit Troops' other aerospace divisions.

"How…how did this even happen?" Sedici asked first. Quinze made no effort to hide his surprise, his eyes looking glazed over under his spectacles. "I mean, without our knowing until now? When it was being announced to us?"

"Colonel, it…it seems like it was being announced to the fleet as a whole, not to Libra specifically…" a junior officer at the comms station began before a ranking officer cut her off.

"Sirs, the best we can tell, their…ultimatum…was originally broadcast over the UHF and SHF band, probably from communications vehicles they took inside the colony itself, rather than the colony's actual communications array."

"That's the ultra and super high radio frequencies, Colonel, from three gigahertz to…"

"I know what the decimeter and centimeter bands are, lieutenant, thank you," he growled back, causing her to shrink.

Her senior officer cleared his throat. "In any case, their broadcast was badly garbled, whether from their equipment or distortion passing through the colony torus itself or something else. The only ones who could make sense of it in real time were the ships in the vanguard and other Mobile Suit Troops out in the field who were listening and happened to get lucky. The broadcast you're hearing now was boosted on relay from the battlecruiser Thebe."

Sedici put a muscular hand over his face, shoulders rigid with anger. The tinny, metallic voice full of spite and bravado was still emerging from a speaker at one of the crew stations. "Shut that off," he ordered.

"Yes sir."

He crossed his arms over his large chest and clenched his jaw. "Fuck," he declared after a minute of silence. "The commander isn't going to like this."

Quinze nodded subtly. "No, I would imagine not."

"And they're obviously suicidal," he said with a gesture at the console with the now silent speaker. "Refusing to surrender is one thing, but this…"

"That doesn't change the situation though, does it?" Quinze asked carefully.

No, I suppose not. "Even Treize won't stand for it. Especially not Treize. And we've confirmed a Gundam in C-00421's space? And not the one that destroyed that colony In 'E' Area?"

"Yes sir. No sir, it isn't," the senior officer replied.

Sedici managed a barely-audible sigh of relief. "Well, it's still technically a hostage situation, Gundam or not. Though I didn't expect OZ to resort to human shields just because of losing a division or two."

"How…how many people know about this?" Quinze asked, floating over to the console.

"You mean after us?" The senior officer looked at his subordinate. "Probably everyone soon. This surviving company from the Second Division scr…failed quiet badly in getting their message to the intended recipient, as far as we're concerned, sirs."

"Then we better begin considering the political ramifications of OZ's desperation, including those that might harm the cause of our revolution," he explained, the scholarly manner returning to his voice.

"We?" Sedici asked with a scoff.

"Commander Millardo's already been informed. So yes, 'we'." Impatience had started creeping into his voice.

Quinze and Sedici exchanged another look. "Well then," Quinze concluded.

"Indeed." He turned back to the crew. "Lieutenant, sound general quarters and get ready to engage hostiles contacts."

"Aye aye, Colonel." Looking relieved, the senior officer gestured at his subordinate and took a spare headset as she struck the key for the ship-wide alarm tone.

"General quarters, I repeat general quarters. All hands to battle stations, all sections on alert. Expectation of hostile contacts," a woman announced over Libra's main circuit talkback amid the alarm tone. Standing by a maintenance gantry in one of the ship's cavernous mobile suit hangars, Carmen Soletta stared in the sound's direction, then over her shoulder.

"You think that means us?" she asked dryly.

Up passed the gantry, in the open cockpit of a WF-12SMS mobile suit brought out of storage for training purposes, Livia Semis looked back down at her comrade. "Well, yes!" The slender woman switched off the cockpit avionics, killing the training program she had been running, and slung herself out towards Carmen, who easily caught her. "Even the White Fang obeys procedure."

They were expected with the other pilots in 1st Lieutenant Thompson's ready room, one of a dozen functioning but largely unused rooms of its type that could be found above the hangars. Though they could've floated the way, they were near enough the hangar walls, and the space itself huge enough, that the local guide rail or one of the many accessible ladders were recommended. In the minute it took for them to reach the guide rail, a trio of bulky mobile dolls, still in OZ Space Forces black and red, had been pulled out of their storage compartment beneath them on the hangar's large ceiling-mounted cranes. With surprising speed, the 7 tonne unmanned machines were fixed in place by empty gantries, awaiting their beam rifles to come from a separate storage area, and three more were being lifted up in the same fashion.

"That'll makes twelve including the units on standby from their power plant testing," Semis heard a very young hangar crew technician shout from the floor. "All mobile dolls in Automated Squadron Nine-Nine-One accounted for!"

"Don't get cute!" his older superior rebuked him. "Just bring them out like you're supposed to, and close the reserve compartment! Those machines aren't even unpacked, the doors shouldn't even be open to start with!"

"Sorry, Chief! I will, Chief!"

Livia stopped herself against the abrasive coating on the hardened hangar floor beneath her, as Carmen waited for the guide rail. "Uh…Chief," she called out, not knowing this particular naval officer by name.

The hangar crew chief's demeanor changed swiftly. "Lieutenant, ma'am! C.P.O. Avram, Automated Squadron 991," he introduced himself courteously.

"Thank you, Chief. I'm sorry to interrupt, but the reserve compartment you mentioned," she asked, gesturing at the furthest of the open storage compartments, its armored doors sliding shut over it amid flashing red warning lights. "You said there was hardware in there still unpacked?"

"Uh…yes, ma'am," he replied, looking mildly confused but remaining patient.

"What's inside then?" Livia heard Carmen shout harshly over her shoulder. She held back a sigh. The chief petty officer looked increasingly uncomfortable with the inquiry.

"I apologize for the captain, she's not a well-adjusted individual like we are," Livia assured him brightly. "But I am curious. We've been working with Lieutenant Thompson and the other Taurus squadron leaders, and we'd like to conduct proper combat exercises or at least something resembling that, but we're short on equipment…"

Relieve seemed to wash over the chief petty officer. "Oh, well that…ma'am. Sorry ma'am, but they won't be anything help to you, at least, as far as I know. It's new mobile doll hardware as I understand it." He frowned again. "Though if you think I'm mistaken, you could speak with Major Michaels or the colonel directly."

Livia smiled back at him cheerfully. "Thank you, Chief."

Carmen was waiting by the motorized guide rail when Livia floated back to her and took a waiting handhold, pulling herself up. Carmen followed.

"What was that about?"

"Oh, probably nothing," Livia mumbled, looking behind her as the final three mobile dolls were swiftly armed on their gantries and moved into position with the other WF-01MD units of the squadron.

"Really?" Carmen asked skeptically.

Livia frowned and with her head gestured in the direction of the short-barreled beam cannons being ferried to their waiting mobile dolls, opposite of the now-sealed compartments below them. "If those are parts for the Virgos, why aren't they being stored in that massive block with the rest of the mobile doll beam cannons?"

"Maybe Libra's crew aren't very efficient?" she offered.

"That's a possibility, obviously," Livia admitted. "Or maybe it's because whatever is in those reserve compartments, it's not just for Virgos."

V

The officer from the Military Commissariat waiting for Walker at Melsbroek knew he was younger than the flight lieutenant would've expected, with round-faced appearance joined by an oversized reflective ground crew safety vest he was wearing over his uniform.

"Flight Lieutenant Walker, sir!" He jogging along the 4WD military car before it came to a stop, his glasses almost bouncing off his thin nose.

"Second Lieutenant…?"

"Hasan, sir. Second Lieutenant Hasan." He saluted as presentably as he could manage as Walker climbed out, closely resembling the relatively handsome, pale complexion of his newspaper photograph, fine features and cheekbones. Perhaps more tired or even a little hawkish.

"Thank you for coming so quickly sir. I've informed my superiors at Whitehall but I thought…uh…" His words failed him.

"That someone should contact Luxembourg too?" Walker smiled at him. "You're very correct, I'm sure. That's what they train you for at the Commissariat."

He blinked. "Uh, yes sir."

Walker stared at him. "So…?"

Hasan froze. "Would you like a coat, sir?"

The flight lieutenant stared back at him. "No, I'm fine right now, thank you."

"Warm day," he blurted out, followed by a nervous laugh. When Walker did not laugh with him, Hasan cleared his throat and directed Walker to the section of the apron near Runways 25R and 07L behind the main building. Waiting on the apron next to an airport crash tender was a single Antonov strategic airlifter in with OZ Earth Mobile Suit Troops markings, tail number OZ-D9921. Hasan couldn't recall having seen D-prefix tail number that high.

Walker studied the large aircraft while Hasan looked for the ranking NCO among the detachment of Melsbroek AFB military police, so he could begin his exasperated shouting that was immediately drowned out by taxiing aircraft.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant, sir?" the military policeman asked, unimpressed.

The taxiing aircraft's roar declined. "It's missing the mobile suit deployment and retrieval gear. A plain-and-simple transport airlifter," he heard Walker announce behind him.

"Uh, sir?" he instinctively asked before turning back to the MP. "I said, 'do not move the aircrew' means 'do not move the aircrew', or does it not?" he repeated angrily.

"Second Lieutenant, sir, meaning no disrespect to you or your superiors in London, but my orders come from Captain Jensen. And Captain Jensen wanted to interrogate the crew personally, sir."

Hasan's face betrayed his distress in a manner quite unlike the MP. "Do you, or your captain, know who that is?" he asked, gesturing. "Flight Lieutenant Walker here answers directly to His Excellency, the Commander-in-Chief, and the General Staff in Luxembourg."

Walker seemed to hear this and turned, looking mildly surprised. The MP noncommissioned officer glanced at Walker underneath his white helmet and made an indignant face for a fraction of a second. "And Captain Jensen is the ranking air force officer posted to this airbase. Sirs, would you like to speak to Captain Jensen and the aircrew?"

Walker approached, a calming expression on his face. "That'll be fine, Staff Sergeant. The aircraft doesn't appear to be going anywhere, why don't we chat with the aircrew."

Hasan gave the staff sergeant an unkind look. "Lead the way, Sergeant," he hissed.

Instead of the airbase's security office, Hasan and Walker were being led to the first floor offices in the main building, adjacent to the facility's roomy ATC Tower.

"Lieutenant Hopkins warned me this sort of thing would happen," Hassan somberly told him. "My superior in Whitehall," he explained apologetically.

"This place hasn't changed," Walker replied softly.

This confused him. "Excuse me, sir?"

"Nothing."

Stopping at an office door with its polished metal nameplate conspicuously defaced, the staff sergeant knocked twice before entering the room with two officers following him. Inside the still-furnished office, sitting on the desk a hunter green daily uniform with the same light blue collar and sleeves but no black armband, was Abegail Jensen, strawberry blond hair swept to a side and a hand grasped around her uniform's visor cap. Hasan wondered if she and Walker had previously met.

The military policeman made his presence known with a smart snap of his boots, the newcomers waiting behind him. Jensen looked up with an expression made it plainly obvious she recognized Walker, seeming to answer Hasan's question.

"Captain. Hello again," Walker declared plainly.

"Welcome back, Flight Lieutenant Walker," she declared, that tinge of an accent in her voice, her unkind eyes shifting towards Hasan, who shrank a little.

"So you two have met," he mumbled unintentionally.

"I was told by Lieutenant Hasan that you've taken Nine-Nine-Two-One's aircrew into custody?" Walker asked, his voice almost overly polite and patient. "I'm not here to take work from the Military Commissariat in Brussels, but I would like to speak with them, or at least be included in your interview before they're handed over."

Slowly, Jensen brought her arms together from her sides and crossed them over her chest, then gestured with her right hand to their left. "Go right ahead, Flight Lieutenant." Despite himself, Hasan immediately sighed in relief.

Walker blinked and turned; Hasan craned to see past the taller man. Sitting in a chair towards the corner of the room in a chair, flanked by another, larger MP, was a young man, Caucasian with a mop of blond hair and probably before his twenties. He wore a grey-blue commercial flight suit, the kind easily available to both corporate and independent buyers; Hasan didn't see any discernable corporate or civil insignia sewn into it, just what looked like a typical five-point harness. He glanced at Walker, who was staring at the young man with an inquisitive look.

"And he's the only one?" Walker asked him.

Hasan sputtered again before looking at Jensen, who nodded coldly. "What, so the whole aircrew consisted of one man? 'Aircrew' does not suggest 'one man'!" he snapped.

"It's certainly possible, given the right training," Walker observed thoughtfully.

"We were likewise surprised, but we've thoroughly searched and scanned the Antonov," Jensen announced. "That aircraft landed here in November, and except when the airport was taken by the Treizists, we've never lost sight of it," she said defensively.

"Except?" Hasan intoned. Walker gave him a warning smile: don't push too hard.

"He had military ID on him." Jensen stood up and reached back towards the table she'd been sitting on and presented it to Walker. "Ross Nathaniel, formerly Baron of Dartmouth by the Romefeller Foundation, and squadron commander in OZ Earth Mobile Suit Troops."

"Baron of…where?" Hasan asked.

"Come on, Walker, don't pretend we've never met, it's rather disturbing," Ross Nathaniel declared. He raised his wrists, bound together in military-issue brushed steel handcuffs, as if for emphasis.

"Excuse me, Mr. Nathaniel?" Walker asked, cocking his head slightly. One of the MPs elected to be helpful and had brought a moved up for him, but the flight lieutenant dismissed it with a gesture.

Nathaniel scoffed in disbelief. "Really? Ross Nathaniel? Member of the anti-Alliance 'Prize' taskforce under Walther Farkill?" In what Hasan immediately recognized as a nervous tick, he rain a hand through his blonde locks.

"It doesn't say any of that on your documentation," Jensen softly reminded him.

"I'm engaged to your sister, Aretha? I'm going to be your brother-in-law in near future?" By now, he was practically shouting.

Walker kept staring at him, eyes blank. Hasan looked back and forth between them nervously.

Nathaniel sighed. "You were my pilot in the Xinjiang Autonomy, back when I was a squadron commander? I piloted…an OZ-06MS-SS1 I believe…" he began, making a visible effort at recall as though it were ancient information. "Modified Leo-E with a beam rifle. It was…red, I think?" He looked a little embarrassed at the admission.

"Oh," Walker announced, as though suddenly struck by clarity. Nathaniel rolled his eyes. "Mr. Nathaniel, it's certainly been a while. How is civilian life without your peerage treating you? Well? Except for today?"

Nathaniel stared at him. "This isn't a good joke, Walker."

"Mr. Nathaniel, you might've been a baron in the past, but you are most demonstrably not one anymore. Nor a commissioned officer. So I would ask that you pay some respect to the flight lieutenant," Hasan managed to bark half-convincingly. He crossed his arms and gestured with one hand in exasperation. "Brother-in-law? Can you believe this one?" he asked Jensen, who was ignoring him.

As was Nathaniel. "Well, I've been here since before your little...your coup that ousted the queen that was. I haven't resisted, and I've already been cooperating with Captain Jensen and the rest of the airbase personnel."

"Like when you landed a reported-missing military transport aircraft using illegally-obtained flight clearance, which allowed you to enter Brussels airspace in the first place," Jensen offered.

"Which is what I told you!" Nathaniel shouted defensively. "I'm not a thief, if that's what you're suggesting!"

"Quite the opposite," Walker conceded.

"Except from who you obtained the aircraft, and its contents, from in the first place," Jensen said. Walker nodded.

"All right, now you people are just screwing with me!" he shouted. "You think I'm not familiar with this? The game called 'Let's fuck with Nathaniel'? I served under Farkill, remember?"

Hasan watched Walker give Jensen an almost sympathetic look. Nathaniel was turning red with anger. Surprisingly, it was the NCO who seemed taken aback by their continued harassment. "Flight Lieutenant, sir, aside from searching for any other aircrew, we naturally took a cursory inspection at the aircraft's actual cargo. The Captain agrees, you'll really want to see it."

"War materiel?" Walker asked, still staring at Nathaniel's reddening face.

"What else could it be?" Jensen taunted him.

"And the Military Commissariat is ready for Mr. Nathaniel's arraignment?"

"Of…course, sir."

Walker turned to Jensen. "Then let's see what Mr. Nathaniel went through so much trouble to deliver to Brussels. Without him."

Nathaniel groaned. Jensen smirked. "I'm inclined to agree. There may be some benefit to looking at this criminal act firsthand, without a list of poorly-thought excuses ringing in our ears," she announced, gesturing at the side of her head with a hand.

"Hasan, why don't you keep the former-baron company…"

The commissariat officer held back a disappointed bleat. "Y-Yes sir. We'll be here then," he explained awkwardly. "With paperwork."

"Oh, how I've missed the paperwork," Nathaniel growled.

Leaving her uniform cap behind on the desk, Jensen followed behind Walker as they both exited the main building and faced the apron, where the Antonov airlifter tail number OZ-D9921 was still waiting. Shouting in Dutch, she ordered the obediently waiting groundcrew to open the two pairs of crew doors forward and aft.

"Was that according to a plan?" she asked him. "Not that I'm complaining."

"Oh, no. Though I've found that I can be particularly irritating if I put my mind to it though," he confessed, the earlier conceit absent from his voice now. "I'm really no use in an interrogation without someone of actual consequence behind me."

"And you're not that yourself?" she asked.

Walker didn't answer, instead stopping in front of the door and feeling his forehead with one hand. "Well, whatever it is, unless it's a Gundam I doubt it's going to be changing the actual situation in our current war the way it would've in the last one." He turned to her, frowning. "It's not a Gundam, is it? Because those things have a history of turning up…"

She cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. "No. At least, I don't think so. To be completely honest, Flight Lieutenant, I don't know what it is. In fact, the whole airbase's technical staff couldn't soundly rule on that."

Walker turned back to the door, eyebrows raised, and followed the waiting groundcrew inside. Jensen followed through the aft crew doorway just as the main compartment's interior lights illuminated.

"Hard to believe this thing just sat here while Commander Kawena and I were threatening to shoot the…place…" Walker stopped mid-sentence as he stared down the sixty-meter-length of the pressurized cargo hold. Tethered securely to the mounting points along the compartment's floor panels, about halfway through, was a single large, angular behemoth of hardware, which nearly reached the compartment's ceiling from where they were standing. Walker kept staring, apparently stunned into silence.

Jensen managed not to gloat. She'd already seen the machine. From her perspective in the Earth Air Force, it did not, in whole, resemble anything she was familiar with. Only separated from their thick armored fuselage and as individual components did it seem to make any sense: a massive repurposed split-pronged beam cannon, vaguely resembling repurposed Space Forces cruiser artillery. A pair of massive rail guns intended for large caliber hypersonic ammunition. An exotic segmented thermal weapon retracted into a spool. She'd seen none of these before, unlike what she found sitting beneath them: lying on its back, a cobalt blue OZ-06MS 'Leo'.

"At least you'll be able to make something out of this, I'm sure," Jensen declared before looking back at him. Walker seemed to be staring into space. "Flight Lieutenant!" she shouted.

He jolted back to reality. "Excuse me."

"Do you know what it is?" she repeated, not bothering to hide the pessimism in her voice.

"Actually, I think I do, Captain," Walker announced and he took careful steps deeper into the compartment. "Besides what was a cannibalized Leo mobile suit."

Jensen blinked and looked back at the Leo. He was right; upon closer inspection, the Leo was missing certain superficial parts: outermost ERA armor plating, equipment hard points, its antenna, and more. "Well?"

Standing it its statue, Walker reached forward and took some of the yellow plastic caution tape that encircled the whole behemoth and tore it free. Along it, in black text, was an endless loop of the same words in bold black print: MAIN ARMAMENTS DIRECTORATE OF THE MINISTRY OF DEFENSE.

He looked at her. "Epidendrum."

She could picture the confusion on her face. "Wat?"

"Bring Nathaniel here. I know what you said, but it's time we take him seriously, and I don't want him developing a sudden case of forgetfulness," Walker asked firmly. He was still waiting by the inclined head of the mobile suit, yellow tape in one hand, when Ross Nathaniel was brought into the aircraft, escorted by a bewildered Hasan.

Walker turned to him, eyes narrowing. "Mr. Nathaniel, I doubt you could completely assemble a one-hundredth scale plastic model of a mobile suit without outside help. So tell me, where did you find this machine?" Despite the metaphor, his voice was markedly colder, devoid of its previously detached civility.

Nathaniel seemed unafraid. "Corsica. Right before I resigned."

Next to one of the military police escorting Nathaniel, Jensen turned. "Corsica, that's where the Leo manufacturing center…"

"And was this all of it?" he interrupted.

"I don't know. I was waiting there with a new Leo squadron for return of the Grand Chariot, my…our flagship, before 'Prize' was dissolved."

Wandering in front of Nathaniel, Hasan stared at the machine, eyes wide as saucers. "What on earth is all this? Did this belong to that…Prize…unit?" he asked, finding his voice.

"More a war trophy, really," Walker muttered, letting the yellow tape flutter to the compartment floor and approaching the staff sergeant. "Sergeant, do you have the key for Mr. Nathaniel?"

The MP obediently complied, presenting Walker with a very small metal key. Barely taking a step, Walker reached for Nathaniel's wrists and unlocked his cuffs, letting them fall to the floor with the key. The blonde man rubbed his wrists and stared back at Walker coolly, but said nothing and began to unzip himself out of the flight suit.

"Do you know what happened to BC-122?" Walker asked him. Jensen turned, eyebrow raised. Nathaniel visibly bit his lip, but Walker was already on his way back to the machine. "Captain Jensen, please have your ground crew prep the aircraft and its contents for delivery back to the Corsica Mobile Suit Works."

Jensen scoffed as Walker ducked below a portion of the fuselage, disappearing from view. "And contact Corsica. Have them locate one of their former staff, a Flight Officer Miyamoto Yoshitsune, and recall him to Corsica to meet it."

Walker climbed up the Leo's cold torso and knelt down to the side of the armored door over the pilot's hatch. Reaching down in the dim light underneath the fuselage, he felt for the manual release lever and gave it a hard pull. There was a loud hydraulic hiss that almost started him and he leaned away, as the door flipped open as far as it could before slamming into the fuselage surface above it.

Walker looked inside. The cockpit, of course, was empty, except for a sky blue military normal suit still in its packaging, a matching helmet, and a bulky pair of Mobile Suit Troops-issue flight goggles with their impact-resistant lenses and a leather strap. He took all three and slid down from the mobile suit, turning from underneath the fuselage.

Jensen was waiting. "Anything?"

"No, nothing identifying beyond the emblem," he said, pointing at the distinctive helmed knight insignia of the OZ Space Forces Mobile Suit Troops, bright yellow even through the packaging. "I don't know why I thought there might be," he confessed.

"It was worth trying," she muttered in agreement, looking at the articles taken from the cockpit

"Walker!" Nathaniel shouted, the top half of his flight suit hanging from his waist. "What happened to the Grand Chariot?"

"The White Fang sank her shortly after destroying Barge." Walker explained matter-of-factly. Jensen gave him a skeptical look. "The Anti-Alliance 'Prize' Force no longer exists."

Nathaniel scoffed. "You may not believe me when I say so, but I'm happy to hear it."

An airbase communications officer had already reported to Jensen. "Get a secure line to Corsica immediately. Flight Officer Miyamoto Yoshitsune," she repeated.

"By comparison, it's much worse news for you." Walker didn't wait for an explanation before returning to the machine.

VI

In civilian dress, Edward Parsons cut an even slighter, thinner figure than he did in the royal blue uniform he'd last worn in the Military Commissariat. Nonetheless, he was surprised by how little he missed it.

Dropping his motorcycle keys into the pocket of his double faced wool overcoat, he opened the door to the fourth floor office at Whitehall and squinted into the December late day darkness. "Joy? Joy!"

"Over here," a woman's voice answered back from further inside the room.

Groping along the wall, Parsons felt for the light before pressing the switch. "Jesus-F-Christ!" he swore, fast enough that the syllables were slurred together.

Second Lieutenant Joy, her own uniform unbuttoned at the stiff gold-trimmed collar, was standing by her desk. Sitting at it, in woman's sheepskin coat over a sleeveless green dress so dark it was effectively indistinguishable from black, was Eva Cebotari.

"Jesus. Fucking. Christ," he repeated, throwing his leather briefcase against a nearby desk, as if objection. It bounced a knocked over a nearby monitor. He circled around and put his hands to his black hair in anger.

"You didn't use to swear this much," Dr. Cebotari observed.

"Fuck!" he snapped back, looking at her. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! How's that?"

She was about to answer when he pointed an accusing finger at Joy. "You! Take out your sidearm and shoot me now. Right now. Don't drag this absurd farce out, you're better than that."

Joy's pretty, smooth face under her brown curls looked taken aback. "You're not being executed, E.P., we don't do that here. We're civilized, even someone as delusional as you knows that."

"I know that, you dumb bitch." Joy looked surprised at the word, though the older woman sitting next to her only smirked. "I'm saying please kill me now! Why does no one actually listen to me?"

"You also weren't quite this dramatic."

"I know, right?" Joy asked, pouting.

"They don't let me carry a sidearm anymore or I would've done it myself," he groaned angrily, snatching his leather briefcase from the desk he'd disordered earlier. "What the hell is wrong with this picture? After I shot you, I offered my resignation to the Commissioner General. 'Oh no, you made the right call, good show lad.' Then I asked to resign when the Queen abdicated! 'Oh no, we can't accept your resignation, state of emergency, lad.' I'm not even a commissioned officer anymore! What am I, some kind of slave?"

"I think they'll let you keep your pension," Joy observed.

"Did you take those files with you, or leave them in Luxembourg?" Cebotari asked.

"I'm leaving," he declared, hastily buttoning his coat and turning for the door. "Shoot me if you want to stop me."

"We won't, and you're not." The easy humor had drained out of his former superior's voice. "Sit down, Edward."

Parsons stared at her, clutching his briefcase. "I'd rather stand."

Joy held back laughter. The doctor shrugged in her rolling chair. "Fine. You want out of the Military Commissariat, E.P.? You should have come to me sooner."

"You weren't exactly available," he countered. "In fact, even if you were alive I thought I'd never see you again. One of the few flickers of positivity in my professional life."

She sneered at him while Joy crossed her arms over her chest. "You see, Lieutenant, the Major and I've made a friendly wager: she says she's know you long enough that you're not just going to go back to Montpelier and work on the family farm or whatever it was you did in New England, and that the whole reason you've continued to work is because you need a non-disastrous transition into the E.S.U.N. civil government."

Parsons looked like he was about to be sick. "Really? And what do you think, Joy?"

"I think you will, you're just too—pardon me—dumb and proud to leave well enough alone." E.P. said nothing, and she continued. "So, Dr. Cebotari thinks that if she offers you even the slimmest hope of a route into a civilian ministry, you'll take it, even coming from someone you left for dead."

"Not exactly my words," Dr. Cebotari added, her breathy voice not disguising her enjoyment of the situation. Parsons stared at both of them with daggers in his eyes. "Remember the Committee for Prevention of Subversion and Sedition? Noreen Parr's project?"

"Terrible name," Parsons repeated. "Also a grotesque abuse of government authority, but mostly a terrible name. Too bad it'll never happen now." He didn't sound entirely sarcastic.

"Under the queen that was, Parr actually successfully earmarked a substantial line of funding, along with more war materiel than I think she would've known what to do with," she explained. "Parr may be out of government, but the fruits of her labor are still waiting to be exploited."

"And I take it we…the Commissariat are benefiting from her misguided largess?" Despite the continued hostility, there was a hint of interest in his voice. He stepped away from the door and towards a desk opposite the two women, sitting down. "Not to sell myself short, but you could find a better accountant."

"I don't think that's what the Major has in mind," Joy explained.

"You're aware of the situation with Libra?"

"What, how the White Fang took most of the Space Navy and all of the remaining Virgo inventory and went on rampage across Outer Space? Or something more specific?"

"More specific." Cebotari glanced at the younger woman from her chair.

"Since you and the Major didn't quite solve the Zechs Merquise problem the first time around—or so I've been told—why don't you two take another crack at it?" Joy asked, an unexpected taunting entering her normally sweet voice.

E.P. felt his eyes widen despite himself. Using a slender arm against the desk to prop herself up, Cebotari gingerly rose on her high heels, long, black hair falling back behind her against her pale features. "Today, we've been given a rare opportunity to act on our error."

"Really? And what good could possibly have emerged from this whole catastrophe?" he asked suspiciously.

"You've heard of C-00421?"

He gave her skeptical look. "Should I have?"

"Thanks to it, we can now confirm that Millardo Peacecraft is not just in control of the White Fang military, but his approximate location." With her right index finger hidden inside a dark green glove, she drew a diamond shape in the air in front of her.

Parsons kept staring, slouching over onto the desk he was sitting. His grip loosened on his briefcase and he opened his mouth, only to shut it and look away into the darkness of the office. It took a few seconds for him to look back. "Really? That's your silver lining? And what exactly do you plan to do with this valuable, hereto undiscovered knowledge? Nuke Libra nonstop until Zechs Merquise develops leukemia and dies in twenty years?"

She was still smiling at him. "If there's one thing the Military Commissariat has been good at, it's learning from its numerous mistakes."

And where do you think you are, where people learn from their mistakes? Parsons held back an exasperated sigh and cocked his head. "So, how exactly do we clean up what is apparently our mess?"

Joy leaned forward. "We'll start with Soris and Lunia Armonia."

Author's Notes:

Six months (rounding up). Six months for what is, I'll freely admit, not six months worth of writing. Talk about completely missing my prior goals and deadlines, I might as well have been in an entirely different time zone. The pace of work has stayed mostly the same, harder in some regards but easier than others, even as I desperately apply for new positions (which, accordingly, would probably see me with less time to write, but considering how utterly worthless my current position and department feel, I'd still take that and a pay cut). There are two major culprits to blame (in other words, two things I've done wrong). First, I started writing—and made substantial progress—on a new story: The Shinra Interviews, using ideals pertaining to the setting of Final Fantasy VII that I've actually been holding onto for years, and I'm genuinely pleased by the response it's gotten. Naturally, that meant when I could actually bring myself to write, I was writing other things (not even limited to that). Second, once (a few shameful months later) the actual structure of this chapter made itself clear to me, I realized: Oh my god, nothing is actually happening. The whole of 9K words takes place over perhaps a day or a day and a half, and nothing interesting actually happens. What am I even writing for? And now you can appreciate how I settled on the chapter title.

Okay, it's not that bad. To start, I actually still enjoyed writing most of it, once I got back into the "pace" of things. Second, I realized that I stupidly spelled Carduus, as in the flowering plant, wrong some 40-odd chapters ago because practically every spell check I use doesn't recognize it as a word, and have been actively correcting that. Third, I've finally come to the cold realization that the Eve Wars will probably be the next, and final, definitive story arc in Walker's Account. Everything, most of this chapter included, is build up towards that. In that light, this story overall will likely finish not sooner (oh boy), but in less writing than I previously expected say, twenty chapters earlier (which is probably a merciful relief if I ever actually intend to finish this work). And so, that's my embarrassing explanation. I'm glad I finish this chapter, and believe it or not, I do intend to keep writing (using volumes 14 and eventually 15 of the manga, which I picked up for this reason), and I really hope not to take another six months to do it. Two chapters a year is bad even by my loosened standards. At least I can say I like how long this chapter is (this long explanation aside), and hope it came off coherently and competently to whatever audience I have left.