Kallen looked at Lloyd in mild indignation, hidden behind a forced smile. His penchant for inappropriate or awkward banter was legendary, but even so you couldn't help marvel at it every time you experienced it for yourself. Still, someone had to bite, and she wasn't so patient as to wait for someone else to finally break the stupor.
"What origin story are you talking about?" she asked.
"I'm glad you asked. But first, why don't we update you on where things currently stand," Lloyd suggested, pleased that she bit.
"I read most of the file on the way over," she said, suspecting he meant covering that dossier.
"Cecile told me you were quite studious," he said proudly, as if it meant something to him that she was intellectually astute. "But we do have a bit more information to share."
"We have new video taken in the last few days. We've already run through the digital analysis, but…" Cecile started.
"We'd like you to watch something," Rakshata said, leaning on a computer interface, tapping away at the touch display. A large vid screen flickered to life and began running a recording.
"What is it?" Kallen questioned back.
"Just a video. I want you to tell me what you think when you watch it. You too, Suzaku."
They did as Rakshata asked. It was a video of a battle; a confrontation between Euphemia Alter and some Britannia soldiers and a few Knightmares. It looked to have been recorded from some short distance away, possibly from some stationary vantage point. It was a more active fight than Kallen had previously believed them to be. The rumors of the attacks made one think the battles were mainly this woman standing by while her beasts ran amuck all over the place. But the scene in this video was much different from that.
The woman with the long, pale pink, tresses wore a dark plum dress, shiny black gauntlets covering her forearms, sabatons of the same, as well as another piece around her torso. In her right hand she carried a large, black, blade. It looked to be a two-handed sword based on its large breadth, but she carried it freely in one hand without any seeming effort. The double-edged blade had a red vein down the center of its flat side; four circles in a row for about the first third of the blade from hilt towards the tip, and a central line from the last circle to just an inch or two from the point.
The woman in the video moved about the area with little effort, sprinting about to position for attacks, guard from blows. It took a while before Kallen even noticed the presence of any of the infamous creatures said to be in her company. They were smaller than she thought they were described to be, not even quite the size of the Knightmares.
It was incredibly fascinating watching the coordination between the beasts and their supposed master, which shed some light and raised some questions for Kallen. The first was the fact that, as best she could tell, these were beasts. The popular theory had been from the start that these alleged dragons were some new type of Knightmare Frame equipped with iconography to make them appear like a dragon. But it was clear enough looking at this video that couldn't be the case – not unless someone had managed to leap more than a century ahead in the science of robotics and engineering necessary to attain such internal coordination and fluidity of movement.
The most advanced robotics research commonly focused on reproducing the movements of the natural world, only at increased strength. Knightmares had been no different. While one might question how human-like a Knightmare could be made, it remained the case that essentially all the original creators of Knightmares had done was attempt to make a machine of greater size and strength to a human, complete with the range of movement that a human could employ. Decades of research that led to the newest generation of Knightmares continued to build on this same goal. However, the most apparent view the average person could get of this technology stemmed from watching animatronics.
Prior to Knightmares, animatronic depictions of animals, even dinosaurs, were already a staple of the more upscale family entertainment retreats. But these were clunky, slow, unconvincing artifices. You could see the seams in the "skin" being used. They were stationary. The most they could do was bob their heads up and down or side to side, or open and close their jaws while some grainy audio track replayed a recording on a loop of what the creature's cry sounded like.
These were not that. These beasts in Euphemia Alter's company were autonomous. Their range of motion was not at all stinted. There was no fixed repetitive nature to their movements. For one thing, they clearly had spines.
When you broke it down, a Knightmare was a series of straight or almost straight pieces, connected at joints to allow for the flexibility of arms, legs, and fingers – the fingers part being a relatively newer innovation in the scheme of things, as it wasn't long ago entire arm modules had to be replaced if you wanted to use a gun instead of a lance, or a lance instead of a sword. But this creature had vertebrae. You could see it arch and twist its back to move around, duck away from attacks, coil around enemies and objects alike.
Put simply, from an engineering standpoint there was no way, with even the best current technology, to create a Knightmare capable of those movements. The number of servos to operate joints at each vertebrae, the miles of cable to connect them all, the processing speed to allow the onboard computer to compute and relay those movement commands, the input system needed for the machine to know what the pilot wanted it to do at any second, the powerplant such a machine would need to be able to operate in such an active manner for so long… there were numerous innovations that needed to be completed to get even close to something like this.
And that body… that body was not suited to a Knightmare Frame either. Her beasts looked something like massive greyhounds with wings. When down on all fours, the dragon's profile had that greyhound's characteristic large front ribcage, dramatically thinner hind area with those powerful back legs. Perhaps if you scaled it up several times it might work, but at that size, a little shorter than these standard series Knightmares, there was nowhere on this creature to say that a Knightmare's Core Luminous and all the associated structure, could fit while also allowing space for a pilot in a cockpit. And there was just no way to remotely operate a machine this precisely. The signal relay, even if getting through the electromagnetic noise that was likely propagating the area, would simply take too long to allow for effective combat.
Seeing the way Euphemia Alter was fighting the Knightmares was a different matter too. One of Kallen's advantages, and likely the chief reason they wanted her here in the first place, was that Kallen was both an ace pilot as well as an engineer. She understood Knightmares from both sides of the coin, so there were things she was bound to notice that others might not immediately pick up on. She wasn't so sure that was the case here; she was sure Rakshata and Lloyd at least saw it already.
"It's hard to believe this could be Euphemia," Suzaku stated with rank dissatisfaction. "Every attack is so powerful. It's incredible to think a person could lift such a large sword, let alone someone like Euphemia. She cuts through people far too easily for any normal human, not to mention the damage she's doing to the Knightmares. But we already knew this much. What we need to know is how to stop her."
"There is no stopping her," Lloyd said with a sort of baffled certainty, as though Suzaku said something that obviously made no sense. "What made you think there was?"
"Well, to be completely accurate, there is a way, and this video shows both how it would work, and why it's nearly impossible." Rakshata added, not clarifying much.
"It's Suzaku," Kallen said, still studying the video, now on its second playthrough. "Well, I guess I should say it's the Lancelot."
"Huh?" Suzaku reacted, confused by what she meant.
"I guess you wouldn't notice it so easily yourself," Kallen sighed, not taking her eyes off the video. "She really is inhuman. She's not a fighter, so I guess it makes sense in that way."
"I don't get what you're talking about." Suzaku stated.
"The first thing that stands out is like Suzaku said; it's hard to believe this could possibly be Euphemia if you'd ever seen her before," Kallen said dully. "She was never a fighter, never showed any aptitude for combat, never showed any interest in combat at all. Five years is a really short time to learn to fight at such a high level you'd willingly take on trained soldiers. And it only makes sense that absent a master to train and teach her, she'd resort to mimicking whatever fighting style she's used to seeing the most; that's how it was for me too. She probably saw you fight in a Knightmare a dozen times, and she's probably watched countless more videos of your battles on the GIN."
"Of course, a person can't mimic the combat of a Knightmare. By design a Knightmare goes beyond the limitations of a human body in many respects. But," Rakshata added.
"But," Kallen interjected with a slow cadence, still pondering as she spoke. "Someone who's never fought before wouldn't really understand that. They wouldn't know the difference, so they'd try to match the range of motion, the speed, of a Knightmare. Her movement, her attacks, are like Lancelot Albion's… but slightly different. They're blunter – more abbreviated. They don't have the same fluid motion. It almost seems like she's desperate, but more controlled than that…"
Lloyd reinserted himself into the conversation. "The human body naturally limits the amount of strain it allows itself to exert. This is a self-defense mechanism to limit the amount of damage it takes. Even though human muscle is capable of incredible strength, it limits itself so that doesn't result in damage to itself."
"To fight at this level is technically "humanly" possible, only if you can overcome such limitations," Rakshata added on. "You hear stories from time to time of a parent in a panic to save their child trapped under some large debris or machinery, exert seemingly unusual strength to move the object and rescue the child. That is because the release of adrenaline and other chemicals in that panicked but centrally focused state temporarily overrides the limiters on the body, allowing for greater exertion of stress on the muscles and ligaments. It's not truly that they've become superhuman, but that they've reached a higher percentage of their body's true natural potential."
"Nevertheless, that doesn't stop the damage to those muscles and ligaments." Lloyd jumped back in. "They will still suffer tremendous damage. To swing a sword of that size, with enough force to cut the armor plate of a Knightmare, would normally tear muscle of the average man's shoulder clean from the bone, and he'd still likely barely scratch the metal. To be sure, some force we're not fully understanding is playing a part, but our suspicion, which is why we asked you to watch this video…"
"She's putting a ton of strain on her body to fight like that." C.C. completed the thought. "She mimicked Suzaku's fighting style in a Knightmare because it was all she knew. Then she closed the gap between the ideal and her ability by risking the destruction of her muscles to get the same effect. The reason her attacks are so abrupt is that she's easing up on the force of her swings at the last possible moment, so that she isn't straining the muscles all the way to the limit. She only fights in brief bursts of incredible power and violence. It may look like she's just being overpowering, and daring defiance, but she's probably resting so that her immortality can heal her injuries from all the muscle damage she takes in each bout."
"Precisely." Rakshata affirmed. "Thus, the double-edged sword, so to speak."
"Hold on, are you saying she's immortal?" Kallen reacted.
"Yes, C.C.'s already confirmed as much," Lloyd answered grimacingly.
"If she's forced to fight long enough, the damage to her body would leave her unable to move and vulnerable to capture. But, with her dragons, and the amount of destruction she can cause before reaching that limit, it's almost inconceivable to get close enough to force her into that sort of a situation." Cecile concluded.
"That would mean that all the times she's gone dormant, when she disappeared after destroying someplace and fought our troops, she was buying time to recover," Suzaku suggested.
"Most likely," Lloyd agreed. "She's probably experiencing excruciating pain as her whole body is wracked by the destruction of the tendons and muscles in her body, the exposing of the raw nerves, a period of numbness, followed by the slow healing of those injuries all over, reigniting the pain anew."
"Not to put too fine a point on it, but she's probably collapsed, bedridden, unable to move very much while she waits for the injuries to be healed. I doubt seeing her doubled over in pain would do much to help the fearful image she's got right now, so there's no way she'll let anyone see her like that."
"That's not all though," Kallen added flatly. Lloyd and Rakshata looked at her quizzically. That had been the crux of what they wanted to discuss.
"What is it you're thinking of?" Lloyd asked, greatly intrigued by what she was studying in the video so intently.
"Has Britannia change the construction of its Knightmares since the war? I mean in terms of materials."
"Not significantly. The alloy composite was updated a couple years ago according to design specifications pre-dating the war, but it was a relatively small up-spec; better durability, slightly lighter, slightly less expensive for repair or replacement."
"And the Knightmares at this base, was there anything special about them?"
"No, regular military spec," Lloyd tentatively answered. He was sure of the answer, just not sure of the point of the question.
"Can I get a look at the Knightmares sometime?"
"Sure, but are you gonna explain the problem?" Suzaku asked.
"Look here," she said, rewinding the video a few moments. "Here this Knightmare thinks it's got her and it's about to slice her in two from her right shoulder to her left hip. She reacts, turning to block at the last moment and raising her sword up."
"Right. And she blocks with her sword long enough to slip away from immediate danger."
"There's several things wrong here. But, from everything I know in both battle and engineering, she shouldn't be able to block that attack, that late, at that angle. I basically learned it from experience, but you learned it when you were training, right Suzaku? Given the speed of the Knightmare, its mass, the mass of the sword the Knightmare is using, the mass of the sword this Alter was using, her sword should be been snapped on contact. As big as her sword is, it shouldn't be strong enough to withstand a strike at that timing and angle. That doesn't even get into the fact that a person would be crushed under that much force bearing down on them all of a sudden. She didn't have enough time to even brace; she simply brought her sword up, almost as reflexively as you would bring up your arm if someone suddenly threw something your direction. Even in battles between Knightmares you will sometimes see very similar movements, and the one in Euphemia Alter's position would end up sliced open."
"Well now, that does make sense," Lloyd said with a smile. "It's certainly another vector we can use to verify our information."
"Our theory will need as much support as it can get," Cecile sighed. Suzaku and Kallen seemed refocused now at the mention of this new theory. Even C.C seemed to pique back up at this.
"What theory is that?" Kallen asked.
"When C.C. returned from her encounter with Euphemia Alter," Lloyd explained, "We were thrust in multiple directions at once. The revelation that she has a Geass meant that we weren't dealing with any average opponent."
"She has a Geass too?" Kallen asked, shocked. She figured it was due course, after hearing a moment ago that this woman was immortal, that she had to have had a geass at some point, but immortality should have made that past-tense.
"Sorry, we hadn't gotten around to telling you that part yet," Suzaku apologized a bit half-heartedly. Kallen wasn't upset, she knew why that part would be left out of phone conversations or the dossier. It was just shock at the very notion.
"In any regard," Lloyd continued on. "The fact that she further seemed to be immortal complicated our attempts to understand. It seemed rather obvious that we would need to figure out what we could about her geass, but so far as we can tell she hasn't actually used it. That would, of course, create our other concern, which is that she has used that power and we simply haven't figured out what harm it's caused."
"I thought you could sense when others use Geass?" Kallen asked C.C.
"I can, but it's not like I can sense a Geass from anywhere in the world. I do need to be relatively close by. And in her case, even when I was right in front of her it only felt like some faint trace of power, nothing very substantial. For some reason her power is a lot harder to pick up on than others had been in the past."
"Even if Jeremiah's Geass Canceller works, we won't know because we don't know what her Geass might've done." Kallen considered.
"Precisely," Rakshata agreed. "Which is why we decided to take a different approach. Even if we don't know exactly what power of Geass she has, we do know that she must also be a unique specimen, since it was thought impossible to have both a Code and a Geass. That would mean either our assumption that a person cannot have both is wrong, or our assumption that a Code is the only means of attaining immortality is wrong. In either case, the only way to figure out a definitive answer would be to research as much as we can about Geass to determine if there are wany clues connecting Geass to immortality."
"But," Lloyd said with some regret in his voice. Or perhaps it was annoyance. "I suspect that we'll find that this power is only somewhat related to Geass, but is actually an entirely different power altogether."
"What makes you say that?" Kallen asked in return.
"Based on what we know of Geass, which admittedly isn't very much, this apparent state violates the chief canon of the evolutionary power of Geass. Geass is transmitted to a subject, manifesting in a stimulating event as a power residing on one of the eyes. It grows in strength over time, eventually coming to reside in both eyes. At this point it becomes capable of taking the next evolutionary step, which permits the subject to receive a Code from another individual. The imprinting of the Code terminates the ability to use the power of Geass in exchange for allowing the subject to exhibit immunity from other Geass, attain immortality, and grant the power of Geass to others. The power we're seeing in the Alter at the very least bypasses the step of overwriting the original Geass.
"Given that C.C., who not only once had a Geass of her own, and has a Code now, was once the leader of the very group that researched and used Geass, has never heard of such an outcome would lead me to believe it's never occurred before. The advantages would seem to be very clear. In short, if it were possible through Geass alone, it would have already happened in the past, and we would more than likely already know about it," Lloyd explained.
"An immortal with a power of Geass would be pretty much unstoppable no matter what they wanted to do," Rakshata agreed. "At least, that's what the current situation seems to be demonstrating."
"There are ways to deal with immortals," Suzaku said, almost as if insisting it to be true.
"If that were all we were facing, that would certainly be the case," Lloyd sighed. "But we also have the issue of her apparent uncommon strength, and the beasts in her employ. That gets to my next point; the theory of the reverse side of the world."
"What's that?" Kallen asked, confused at what that phrase was supposed to mean.
"When I was the lead of the Geass Syndicate," C.C. explained. "My predecessors often referred to what was called the reverse side of the world. It was said to be where the power of Geass originated; an ancient place where the old myths and the ancient world of the gods still existed."
"It sounds like a general origin myth," Suzaku critiqued.
"That's what I always considered it to be," C.C. replied. "It wasn't as though anyone claimed to have ever been there, or could really describe "where" it was in the first place. Like the Garden of Eden, or Mount Olympus, the Syndicate always treated it as a mysterious place that no one alive had ever seen. The Sword of Akasha was thought to be a pathway there, but I don't believe that place was actually the same place in the Geass legends."
"The thing is," Rakshata added. "a number of other religious disciplines and belief systems hold similar references, in particular the old Germanic and Ulster tales. The reverse side of the world in those traditions is an actual place, though humanity cannot go there. It's similar in some ways to the idea of heaven and hell in the monotheistic traditions, or the heavens and the underworld in the polytheistic ones. Except, they treat the worlds of the afterlife as fundamentally being a part of the same realm as the living world, therefore the reverse side of the world exists opposite that as well."
"This is getting very confusing," Kallen sighed heavily, rubbing her head in a touch of frustration. "What exactly are you saying? That this other world really exists?"
"I wouldn't go that far," Lloyd replied, he too rubbing his head now. "We just don't have any evidence to say that is the case. We do, however, know that the tales of the Arthurian legends do indeed make note of the existence of the reverse side of the world, and place not only the great sage Merlin there, but as the final resting place of King Arthur, and even a potential origin of his holy weapons."
"Sorry, I don't know much about English folklore," Kallen replied.
"In one of the older telling's of the Arthurian legends," C.C. explained. "King Arthur pulled the magical holy sword Excalibur from the stone and attained the right to be king. However, he retired the sword, using it only as a symbol of his authority to be king. When he went into battle he instead chose to wield a different weapon, a holy spear known as Rhongomyniad. It was said to be a blessed lance, one whose true function was as an anchor that tethered reality to the reverse side of the world. If not for this tether, the reverse side of the world would peel away and both would collapse."
"I'm sorry, are we really suggesting this person has the power to split the world in two?" Kallen asked in disbelief they were on this inconceivable track of thought.
"No." Rakshata answered flatly. "Nevertheless, what power she does have is likely derived in some manner from one of these belief systems, particularly as they overlap in terms of regional nexus with Geass' origins. The literal idea of a reverse side of the world is likely non-existent. However, the power of Geass does hold some ancient origin, and whatever power the Alter has, given its congruence to exist in apparent symbiosis with Geass, means they likely share similar origins."
"It should at least give us a clue where to start looking for information on what her power is and how to beat it," Cecile said.
"The reverse side of the world… Why do we keep ending up in these crazy situations?" Kallen sighed.