C.C. and her cadre were spread out across the home. It was a relatively normal looking place, albeit abandoned some time ago from all appearances. It was a middle-class home, two stories tall. It was set a decent way away from the city, tucked closer to the mountains and forest here in the upper pacific coast of Britannia.
This home was unusual for one reason. It was "active," yet uninhabited. Asking around when they arrived in the area, they confirmed that someone had been there recently, receiving grocery and home supply deliveries on a regular basis. It was something some locals took notice of because they thought it was a vacant house. And then, almost as suddenly, the deliveries stopped.
"How'd you find this place?" Ayano asked, tossing aside a meaningless book.
"It's one of the royal family's secret houses," C.C. answered, kneeling over a set of documents on the living room floor, examining them for their relevance and significance.
"Secret house?" Ryo asked, finding her word choice a little odd. He had come in from the kitchen, a canned good in his hand, inspecting it to get an idea of when exactly the place was last used.
"Yeah. A lot less used under Charles, and pretty much abandoned entirely by Nunnally, there's a bunch of them all over the world. They originally started as hideaways for members of the royal family to spend time away from the capitol or regular public sight. Not really for the likes of the emperor or the more prominent heirs, but like the lesser known royals; the ones that might blend in if they were in public and didn't go around in their royal finery."
"Sounds like the place for a mistress," Ryo scoffed.
"Well, that too," C.C. smirked.
"And you think the Alters were here?" Leila asked, coming down the stairs.
"When I first started looking for Euphemia Alter, I made the mistake of assuming there was no way that she was actually involved with Nunnally's family at all. Given the choice to imitate Euphemia, I should have assumed that at a minimum whoever this was wanted to mimic the royal family as much as possible. If that's the case, then the secret houses would be the better choice."
"I didn't imagine a "secret house" would be so easy to discover," Leila mocked.
"That's why we're here. I know that Nunnally and Cornelia don't use them for anything. In fact, I'm not sure how much Nunnally even knows about them, if at all. I'm sure most of these houses've fallen apart by now."
"In other words, deliveries and upkeep here means it wasn't just the empire maintaining the place for the hell of it," Ryo remarked.
"Before I can go to Nunnally and accuse someone so close to her of secretly betraying her, I at least need to make sure I'm not just imagining it all."
"Are you giving up on stopping the planned attack?" Leila asked.
"It's too late. Even if I went back now, it'd be too late to stop the military's plans. They're probably playing right into Euphemia Alter's hands. But if I can give them to Nunnally, maybe it won't be too late to figure out the rest of her plan, and how to stop it."
A woman's voice interrupted and said, "I encourage you to work quickly. There may come a moment where her power will grow too great for you to stop."
Ayano and Ryo spun around, drawing their guns and aiming at the unexpected visitor. But they tensed when seeing her. She looked to be a young woman, whose frame and features looked all too similar to C.C.'s, save her hair trimmed far shorter and cascading from black as dark space to a pink so vivid it looked to glow like neon, and eyes as pink to match. The thinking was almost immediately the same for them both; this was a fourth Alter.
"You're showing yourself now? I thought there was no way you'd have anything to do with me thanks to what I did," C.C said smartly, the Geass sigil burning brightly on her forehead.
"You became a threat to the world itself, and then you were not. Now there is another."
"I don't suppose you'll tell me anything actually useful?" C.C continued to mock.
"There's someone that can tell you anything you needed to know, is there not?"
"Stop it! You leave her alone!" C.C. said angrily.
"Humanity is a puzzling species. It asks for power and then abuses it, ignores it, and then covets it even more. We believed it wrong that humanity be allowed to keep such power with such inscrutable logic towards it. Now it appears the fruits of that decision are ripening far quicker than humanity's ability to reconcile.
"Nevertheless, I only came to offer you a reminder; your friends and loves do not share your immortality. They cannot afford a lax pace as you might be accustomed."
"Then don't waste my time telling me things I already know," C.C. sneered.
"I merely want to make certain you're keenly aware. Well then, C.C., Leila, and their friends."
The woman disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving Ryo and Ayano staring in bewilderment. C.C and Leila could only sigh, Leila shaking her head.
"Who was that? Was that an Alter?" Ayano questioned.
"No," Leila answered.
"It doesn't have a name. We used to call it the Counter Force. It's more or less the representative of the Collective Unconscious. Normally they only appear to those who have a connection with Geass. I assume since you two know both Leila and I that they figure it doesn't matter if you see them or not," C.C explained.
"And they always just show up like that? Geez, nearly gave me a heart attack," Ryo angrily object.
"They only show up at random times, and usually only give cryptic or indirect messages. They say their concern is with the survival of the world, so they only show up when there's someone they feel is a threat. Even then their main role is as an observer, so they won't normally take any deliberate or direct action."
"I met her before," Leila added. "I thought she was you back then too, before I understood who she was."
"Yeah, what's up with that?" Ryo asked.
C.C had gone back to looking through the papers she was examining before. "I don't know, maybe they just wanted to imitate the most beautiful woman in the world."
"I'm serious," Ryo stated emphatically. "We've got these doubles running around blowing the world to hell, and you conveniently forget to mention that there's one that looks just like you out there as well?"
"That thing is basically the planet itself. Trust me, if she were with the Alters, we wouldn't be here having this discussion right now, and she wouldn't be warning us about them. There is only one Counter Force."
"It's true," Leila agreed. "It's hard to put exactly into the right words, but she's only interested in limiting how people use Geass. I've seen her power. We would be all dead already if that's what she wanted."
"Fantastic, so we're just surrounded by supernatural planet-killers? Good to know Charles Britannia enslaving half the world and raining bombs on the heads of the rest was the least of our worries all along," Ryo scoffed in disgust.
"I'd like to tell you we're safer than you think, but the truth is that seeing the Counter Force just makes this all the worse," C.C said grimly.
"What do you mean by that?" Ayano asked, sounding angry herself.
"I was still holding out some hope that this was really just some kind of Geass that I wasn't at all familiar with, or that there was some other trick to these Alters. The Counter Force wouldn't have shown up if that was the case. Pedestrian matters like a bunch of humans fighting don't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. The Alters must be a genuine threat."
"Great, comforting news all around. Glad I came," Ryo loudly grumbled, heading back into the kitchen.
"Hopefully Akito and Yukiya manage to find something on their end," Leila sighed, glancing out the window.
While C.C. and her group were busy on the Pacific, the capital was very quiet. It had been a few days since the incident at the memorial site. The cleanup was over, but the public was still very much on edge, only so assured by Nunnally's statements about making certain to stop the ones responsible for the tragedy. They couldn't actually see her efforts to do anything about it, so her words rung hollow to some. But after having resisted the idea, and with one fewer voice in her ear on the dissenting side, she agreed to the military's plans for attacking Euphemia Alter at the next earliest opportunity.
The plan was simple. They knew that, aside from her apparent public excursions to sow chaos, she was only really going after military bases. Taking note of those bases she attacked, they figured out what they believed to be the most likely next targets. Pinning down a couple, they would pre-position hidden forces, including Knightmares and ground support units like armored carriers, tanks, and soldiers. Meanwhile, all local bases would be placed on a silent high alert, ready to deploy in moments of word that she was spotted.
From there the battle plan was simple. They would lure her into a battle of attrition. Relying on the observations from prior encounters, by having units attack her from all sides, retreat and rearm while other units came in to do the same, they could cycle their own resources to keep up a prolonged offensive. The goal for no one unit would be to land a final blow, but to collectively exhaust her.
"This is less a typical battle and more akin to a siege," one general put it to his commanders during the operations briefing. "Our target is not a woman, or even a human being. It is a mobile fortress. Our goal is to immobilize it, and then whittle it down until its ability to fight back is exhausted and we can then capture it.
"Given Avenger's track record, we'll be expecting their movement at any time within the next 72 hours. Diversion operations are already underway for our other targets. The greatest threat to our operation remains Rider and Berserker. Secondary concern are their airborne tanks.
"For our operation to succeed Berserker and Rider must not be able to breach the battle space before, during, or immediately after, we conclude our engagement with Avenger. For that reason, a keen watch will be incredibly important for our entire operations space. If they manage to sneak up on us, we're going to lose a lot of men and women out there. The rear guard will need to keep extremely sharp attention and be in immediate contact with the main force. Diversion operations are already underway to keep them at bay.
"Air units will need to be on strict guard as well. The airborne tanks are extremely durable and agile. Concussive munitions have proven to be more effective than armor piercing or incendiary, which have had poor ability to pierce their scaling. Our aerial units' focus will not, however, be on downing the tanks, but in keeping them occupied. Avenger primarily uses the tanks to provide her own transport into and out of the area, as well as defensive support for herself. Rarely does she use them for offensive support. That means you can expect we'll only see her call on them to help her defend against our attacks or to attempt an escape. We only need to prevent them from doing that. If you can kill 'em, all the better. But we don't need anyone up there trying to play superhero. Focus on the mission at hand, trust in the strategy."
The following day, some 530 miles away from Pendragon, an alert siren went off at a military base at about four in the afternoon. A dragon had been spotted in the area of the base. The call was immediately made to prepare for battle. Ten minutes later Euphemia Alter, Avenger, was spotted on the base. She was greeted by a rainstorm of gunfire, and the battle began.
The first couple minutes seemed to go about as planned for the military assault. Euphemia Alter was caught off guard, besieged by the unexpected force. She was surrounded almost immediately, any chance to escape obstructed by lines of military hardware and a waiting firing squad.
The firepower deployed was intense, rockets and bullets flying at Avenger with impunity. Yet the returns were less than satisfactory. She was unarmored, merely wearing a dark plum dress. Her only weapon was a broadsword, black with red markings along the flat. Her infamous dragons were nowhere to be seen either, as though her distressed situation had prevented her from calling on her potent allies.
Even so, she was evading any real harm. There was something immediately odd in seeing her, the epitome of the image of a dainty princess, dashing around a battlefield. There was a bewitching elegance to see her twist away from incoming fire, swatting away with her sword and scabbard what she couldn't evade. The desperation and fraught nature of the fight prevented the ability to gauge the real success of any one apparent hit. She didn't fall, and she didn't stop, so it was irrelevant if she was struck or not; she hadn't been struck enough.
In a genuine battle, time can seem to disappear into an amorphous abyss, fast at times, slow at others, leaving you in a confused state. Soldiers taking cover, peppering the enemy position with gunfire, waiting for support units to launch long-range strikes, waiting for combat commands to be relayed, surveying the combat space, and enduring the same from the other side. In a siege battle, which is what they'd been told they were engaging in, the fighting was meant to continue for days, the target being forced to defend themselves with no chance to receive supplies and resources.
Against one considerably smaller target, that process was much simpler, much faster, much less sensible. She had nowhere to seek cover, so had to continually move around. If she stopped for even a moment, a rocket propelled grenade could catch her unguarded, a tank or assault carrier training its gun on her, or a Knightmare storming in and cutting or skewering her. That so much time passed without these things happening was already an unfathomable thing to witness, given again that this was one woman, carrying a large sword, wearing no obvious armor, darting around in an open field.
About eight minutes into the battle the first dragon appeared in the area. It was a large one, though not among the largest seen in her company in the past. It was deterred by the rear guard units, intercepting the beast before it could get close enough to impact the fight against its master. A barrage of anti-air fire, and a couple of airworthy Knightmares, held its attention and kept it away. The beast was clearly agitated at the interference, yet could not help its master, stuck trying to rip apart the attackers blocking its way.
About fifteen minutes into the fight, the dragon chased further and further from its master, Euphemia was enduring the fourth wave of attacks. The field commander approached in his Knightmare, calling a momentary cease in the assault. One could guess when and where Euphemia received her wounds, but her dress was torn in several places, what looked from a distance to be blood on her arms and legs. She had a scowl on her face that looked like a pout, her pink hair matted and full of dirt. The commander opened the hatch on his Knightmare and stood there, offering her a scowl of his own.
"The game is up, don't you think?" he called down to her.
"I don't know what you mean," she answered back, turning a smile that seemed to be daring and mocking, not at all conciliatory as he'd seemed to hope.
"Give it up! We already know your weakness. You should be about at your limit, aren't you!? Keep this up, and you'll collapse from all the damage to your muscles and ligaments. It's your choice; keep struggling and extend your pain or give up now and save yourself the torture!"
"Is that so? And how did you make such a discovery?" she asked, her gaze narrowing with contempt.
"It became obvious from watching the recordings of your previous battles. We even know about how you try to hold back before you deliver your blows so that the strain on your body isn't so heavy. It's no use stalling either. We know it takes a while for your injuries to heal too."
"So that's where this plan came from. It's a sound strategy. But I think it lacks a certain amount of sophistication," she said, as she raised the black sword to the air. "Lelouch was brilliant when it came to things like this, but I wasn't much of a match for him. But that's neither here nor there.
"I always thought someone would pick up on my holding back. Was it Earl Lloyd? I can almost imagine him mocking how inefficient that is," she chuckled. The markings on the sword began to glow like hot embers.
"So, you intend to take the more painful route? So be it. Some suffering is the least you deserve for what you've done, Massacre Princess!"
"Even I wonder, if not for that despicable title would I be here right now? But I can hardly expect any better from a small commoner like you," she said angrily. "You're another product of father's regrettable ideology. I'm not like Marrybell. I'll give you the choice; you can apologize and ask for forgiveness, you can simply run, or you can die."
"I already said that you can't stall us out. Everyone, resume the attack!"
"You were right; I do hold back on my attacks, but it isn't to save myself. It is so that I don't cause too much damage."
Euphemia's hands gripped the hilt of the sword a little tighter. She raised the sword up above her hair, pointing it straight up to the sky, and then dragged the sword down through the air as if she were under water fighting the pressure. The result was a tsunami of energy. It looked as if the air itself was erupting in fiery explosions, a path of searing flames impacting and splitting the Knightmare in front of her. Three smaller mobile combat units behind that Knightmare were caught in the literal line of fire, and immediately exploded like a firecracker.
The wedge of flames crashed into the ground, and the earth split. As the fire dissipated, it revealed a seam in the ground, nearly a mile long, and at least a foot and a half deep. The ground was charred like deep-black pitch, some areas with a sheen like polished obsidian. Just on the outside of the carving, boulders and rocks were glowing red hot, as if they were freshly ejected clumps of magma from a volcano.
But she was not yet done, intense gun and rocket fire coming her way from the frantic units resuming the assault. With a single sweep of her sword she loosed a stream of flames that smashed a series of tanks in their broadside. You would have thought a truck hit them for the explosive force that impacted on them. She took a couple steps to her right and swung again, a horizontal slash across her body. Then she took a few more steps to her left and swung again. Each swing and strike was like a river of flames scorching and laying to ruin all that was in the way.
By the time she was done with the quick work she made of the forces sent to subdue her, the area around her for a little more than a mile had become a caldera. With the Knightmares it looked as though giants had been trapped in the subduction of some fiery swamp still bubbling and fuming as though ready to erupt at any time. A haze covered the area, as much of evaporated water out of the air as it was of smoke from burnt everything.
Black dragons began to soar in from who knew where, circling once as if to assess the security of the site, and landing on the edge of the makeshift caldera. There was a total of six of them, one left to wonder what became of the units that were supposed to be keeping the beasts at bay. Their roars filled the air, a terrifying bellow that seemed to be celebrating their master's victory. Euphemia looked around at the work she had done and was satisfied as she thought it was good.
"I tried to warn them," C.C. said, observing from a safe distance. She looked more sad than scornful – less like, "I told you so" and more like "Why did it have to happen?"
"What is she?" Ayano questioned. She had a look as though she was about to be sick.
"A girl. A monster. A demon. A goddess. Whatever you want to call her, we have to find a way to stop her," Akito stated coldly.
"Mind at least explaining what you meant by "warning" them?" Ryo asked C.C.
"They came up with the theory that she was vulnerable if forced into a prolonged battle because her attacks were so powerful that it likely meant she was damaging her own body in the process. They assumed that the fact she only had short battles, fifteen minutes or less in most cases, meant she was retreating after sustaining too much damage and had to go somewhere to stay out of sight while it took time to heal."
"Well, I guess that makes some sense. Obviously wrong though," Ryo said with a grimace, watching through binoculars a charred Knightmare arm break off to the ground under its own weight.
"She was managing her power. For all the damage she was causing before, she was holding back still," C.C enlightened.
"She's a cataclysm. As bad as Marrybell is, she's easy enough to understand – she just burns stuff. But this mess… it's not as big and flashy, but still…" Leila remarked, turning her head in disgust.
"That's cause she's still holding back," Akito stated.
"Huh?" Ryo questioned, a little stunned at Akito's suggestion.
"You think that was all of it? Not a chance," Akito affirmed. "They made the same mistake. They're watching the force of her attacks, not the effort. She still wasn't trying as hard as she can."
"I don't get it, what's the difference?" Leila asked.
"If I put all my weight and skill behind an attack, but I do it in slow motion, it'll look like there's a lot of force," he explained, moving his arms as if holding an invisible sword. "In reality there isn't any and it won't really do any damage unless I speed it up. At the same time, if I swung my arms about wildly, without any skill or form, I could hit something with a decent amount of force to cause damage, but still not show any real skill. It'll do more damage, but it's barely got any real control. Her earlier battles must've been like she was moving in slow motion. This one, she started to swing about wildly."
"Are you saying she's using this as training or something?" Ayano questioned.
"More like toying. She was screwing around until they thought they had her cornered, and then she did all that. Imagine then if she put it all together; the skill and technique to go with the power."
"It's like she's escalating in response to the threat," Leila theorized.
"Yes. If you don't do anything, she'll ignore your existence. But, if you attack her, she responds."
"What's she trying to do? She reveals herself out of the blue, and then plays these sorts of games. It doesn't make any sense," Ryo grumbled, getting frustrated at the seeming hopelessness of their challenge.
"You're right. It isn't very logical, but it's still too orderly to be simple chaos. She has a plan, but we're not seeing what it is. That's why we had to find someone who could help us understand," C.C. said as she started walking away.
"U-umm… I think she's looking this way," Ryo said, an uncharacteristic tremble in his voice.
"She knows I'm here," C.C dismissed, sounding very annoyed. "She's probably thinking I should've listened and joined her. But we're not on her radar. We don't matter at all to her right now. If we did, after what she just showed us, we'd already be burning. Let's go. We've gotta get back to Pendragon."