Author's Note: Yo. Sorry for being a week later than you expected, but I was seriously behind in my writing and needed the extra time. Anyway, this is chapter 29. I hope you enjoy it.
FYI, for all those people who ask, I DO NOT abandon stories without giving clear and precise advance warning. An obvious sign of that will be the description of the fic being changed to a single word. Three guesses what that word is, hmm?
Look at my profile for my writing schedule! BEFORE you ask me in a review or PM!
As always, Read, Review and check out my other stories.
Disclaimer: Code Geass isn't mine.
Beta'd By BigCC.
"Kallen" - Speech
'Lelouch' - Thought/mental communication
"{Die}" - Geass Command
"Halt!" - Loudspeaker
"Roger." - Radio/Walkie-Talkie
Chapter 29: Sword-Bearer vs. Crimson Lotus
With Cornelia
Uttering a curse, the Witch of Britannia made her Gloucester leap back to avoid Kyoshiro Todoh's snarling black blade. She also discarded her shredded lance; whatever that strange new weapon the so-called 'Miracle Maker's' frame was wielding, it had destroyed her Jousting Lance with almost contemptable ease. Instead she drew her Knightmare Sword; she set herself against him once again.
"How does it feel to be the one on the receiving end of technological superiority, Cornelia!?" Todoh's voice crackled across the radio, calm but radiating a smugness that made the Britannian Princess grit her teeth in annoyance. "This Sekkendō will destroy you!"
Ignoring the man's taunting, Cornelia quickly scanned the battlefield around her. The Four Holy Swords were actually managing to put an immense amount of pressure on her Royal Guard, slowly grinding them down. She was enough of a practical tactician to admit that the teamwork that the four Japanese Knightmare pilot showed was nothing short of astounding. Working together, those four in their new Knightmares, which themselves seemed to be at least equal to her unit's Custom Gloucesters, had already forced five of her Royal Guard to eject, and even Guilford was being hard pressed to fend them off.
She was going to have to make this quick, luckily the enemy commander was already directly confronting her. After all, the best way to kill a snake was to cut off its head.
Besides, she had personal business with this man.
"I have wanted to meet you for a while now, Kyoshiro Todoh." The purplette stated calmly, forcing down her rising anger as memories began to rise. "Seven years ago, you put a gun to the head of my little brother! How dare you threaten my family!? I shall teach you the error of your ways, here and now!"
Cornelia li Britannia's best attribute, which would be a surprise to anyone outside of the Imperial Family, was her familial piety and love. She loved her family, putting their lives above almost everything else. Hearing of the likely deaths of Lelouch and Nunnally had almost broken her, as they were the closest and most beloved siblings that she had aside from Euphemia.
The mere chance that they were still alive had been like a breath of new life to her, one that she was careful not to let rise too high lest disappointment slay her again.
Hearing from Suzaku Kururugi of how this man had threatened Lelouch with a pistol to the head had made her blood boil with rage. She had nursed that fury until this point, promising herself that Kyoshiro Todoh would pay a hefty price for daring to threaten her brother like that. Now was the time to make good on it.
"And so what if I did?" Todoh responded after a moment, levelling his blade at her. "If you have a problem with it, come at me, Witch of Britannia!"
"You don't need to tell me twice!" Cornelia roared. Her Gloucester lunged forwards, sword drawn back and ready to impale her enemy.
A common truism amongst sword fighters was that the point beats the edge. In other words a thrust would almost always beat a cut or slice. That remained true with Knightmare sword fighting, so long as the blades remained ordinary swords.
And Todoh's new blade was far from ordinary.
Todoh slashed at her, the rapidly-spinning chainsaw-like blade of the Sekkendō enhanced by the strength of his Gekka Custom and the jets attached down the length of the sword. In comparison, Cornelia's weapon was a standard Knightmare Sword. Granted, it had been made with the finest of materials and customised explicitly for her own use, and it had the power of her customised Gloucester behind it, but against the strength of the Sekkendō and the Seventh Generation Knightmare's superior strength, it stood no chance.
With a mighty smash, Cornelia's weapon was utterly shattered into pieces, leaving just a small amount of the blade attached to the hilt. It had taken less than five seconds for the Sekkendō to chew through and shatter the blade.
With a swift kick, Cornelia retreated back just in time to avoid the lightning-swift reverse strike of the Sekkendō. Fortunately, she had learnt her lesson at Narita and carried more than one Knightmare Sword, not that it would do much good here. As long as Todoh had the time to fully swing back his blade, he could smash through as many ordinary swords as there was grass on a plain.
"Princess, I'm coming with reinforcements!" Dalton reported. "Hold on for a few minutes and we can turn the situation around!"
"Understood. Hurry." Cornelia replied in a clipped tone. She cursed the Black Knights, as it could only be through them joining hands with the JLF that Todoh could have gotten his hands on the same type of sword as Zero had used at Narita.
'Zero…just how far will you go to make life difficult for me?!' she snarled in her mind.
At any rate, she had to survive against Todoh long enough for Dalton to arrive with reinforcements. That would not be easy if she attacked. By keeping to the defensive, no matter how she loathed the idea, she could maintain a slight advantage against her opponent.
Grimly, the former Goddess of Victory settled in for a long, drawn out battle.
With Diethard Reid
Black Knights Mobile Command Centre
He had, at one point, been offered the opportunity to be a war reporter. Naturally, Diethard had refused. Even if he had been able to see history in the making with his own eyes, he would have been forced to alter, twist, turn and contort what happened until it barely qualified as 'the truth' if you squinted at it.
Besides, foreign militaries regularly took pot-shots at Britannian War Reporters.
Now though…now he could see why those who survived numerous times on the battlefield spoke about it with wild looks in their eyes. He stared fixedly to the numerous camera feeds that Zero had hacked (as easily as taking candy from a baby!) and felt his heart beating faster. This was awe inspiring! The former Goddess of Victory, forced onto the defensive while her troops fell around her one by one under a whirlwind of steel and fury! All at the hands of the Phantom of Itsukushima's Miracle, Kyoshiro Todoh and his Four Holy Swords!
On one side of the port, the Knight of Four was beset by the one called Mamoru Takagahara in the Guren MK I, a battle of old age and treachery against youth and vigour. Such a match would be the likes seen in old legends!
Finally, the Knight of Nine faced against the halfblooded Kallen Kōzuki in the Guren MK II and Zero in his Kokuten, the former Guren MK 0. He'd heard her story and it was certainly a stirring tale to say the least, the kind that wouldn't be out of place as the origin story of a heroine in an epic or drama. It was a shame that, for now at least, he couldn't publish it for fear of revealing her identity, but Zero guessed that that situation wouldn't last forever, so Diethard had written up an exposé piece on her and gotten approval from Zero to have it released if and when her cover story was blown.
Every army needed heroes and figures to draw in public support, and while Todoh was a known and well-loved one amongst the Japanese people, the Black Knights needed their own stars to act as beacons. Miss Kōzuki's skill, beauty, and rousing backstory made her an ideal candidate not only for the Japanese but would also draw in other half-bloods to their side as well.
The battle had only been going on for a handful of minutes and already he had written two notebook pages full of notes! Not a small amount either; the pages were crammed full of words, especially the note taker's shorthand he used to save as much space as possible on the paper.
'How long has it been since the thrill of a story has made my blood sing?' he wondered as his pencil danced across the pages. 'How long since my journalistic integrity hasn't felt battered and beaten? Not since I was learning the trade at least.'
Zero had ordered him to watch the battle and write a story for the newsletters that were going to be distributed to the ghettos and in the Britannian Settlement itself. The name of those newsletters? Semper Veritas or 'Always True'.
'The sword of truth is swift and merciless. It is high time that Britannia realised this fact.' Zero had told him the previous day.
Diethard couldn't agree more.
With Dorothea
With a roar, her Bullpup Rifles shot metallic death at the red, brown and ochre unit that was so infuriating to her but. She. Just. Couldn't. Hit. IT!
"Stay still, damn your eyes!" Dorothea roared as she tried and failed to kill her enemy.
"You have a short fuse, don't you young lady?" Mamoru observed as he positively danced around her weapons fire as if her bullets were nothing more than leaves caught in a light, spring breeze. Dorothea couldn't believe the agility and manoeuvrability that the enemy machine seemed capable of; it made a Gloucester look slow and clumsy by comparison.
Her Exeter, modified as it was for heavy weapon handling and straight-line speed over manoeuvrability, couldn't even hope to measure up to it.
'Just how the hell did these Elevens get their hands on Seventh Generation machines?!' That particular question was running through her mind in a near-endless loop. It made no sense! The only Numbers in the whole Area with the sort of clout to conduct that sort of research were the Numbers Administrative Committee, the NAC, but she had seen the oversight and restrictions they were under! There wasn't any possible way for them to have constructed and run a research facility in the last seven years!
Had they accepted help from the Chinese Federation or the Euro Universe? It was possible, but also unlikely. Neither power had any Knightmares that looked anything remotely like the Guren, and the overwhelming vast majority of the Knightmare forces of both the CF and EU were Fourth Generation trash at best, although she had heard that the EU had some Fifth or Sixth Gen machines deployed at a different part of the front from where she had been.
A new player? Someone backing Zero? Who? A secret alliance of some of the countries that Britannia had yet to conquer, yet were not a part of the EU or CF? Impossible. Even pooling their resources, every country not a part of the Big Three Superpowers couldn't come close to matching any of them. Plus, Britannia had the vast majority of the world's Sakuradite resources under its control via Area 11. The resources needed for a research program would be easily tracked.
It was driving Dorothea mad. Elevens, and Numbers in general, were trash to her. Yet here was one matching and surpassing her, with a machine that surpassed her own!
Unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable.
"DIE!" she roared and fired more and more bullets at her enemy.
"Tell me dear, do you know what the definition of insanity is?" the Sleeping Dragon of Kanto asked leisurely.
"Fuck you!"
"The answer is simple." He said breezily, ignoring her rude response. "Repeating the same action over and over again in the hopes of something changing."
With that, the Guren MK I leapt in close and, before Dorothea could react, sliced her guns in half with a scissor cut of his two Kaiten Yaibatō before retreating, leaving her holding a pair of useless pieces of scrap metal that had once been her backup ranged weapons.
She threw aside the now useless weapons and gripped the handles of her last two weapons, the pair of custom Knightmare Daggers that she had previously used to carve up fifty Panzer-Hummel Knightmares when she assaulted a fortress on the EU Front.
Knife fighting had been a family skill passed down the female side of the Ernst Family for generations and she was not ashamed to admit that her mother was still by far her superior when it came to the knife. Throwing, stabbing, slicing…all three of these foundational skills were taught to the Ernst women as a young age. Although looked down upon by those who carried a sword, Dorothea knew that that self-same conceit was a fatal flaw that could easily be exploited.
Swords may have reach and power, but get in close and there is nothing deadlier than a dagger.
All she needed was an instant and she would shred the arms from that accursed unit and rip the pilot from his position of superiority!
She would make him taste dirt!
"Hooo…knife fighter, are you?" Mamoru drawled as he lazily swung his swords in loose circles, the air itself shrieking as the saw-like blades tore through it. "This might not be so dull after all. Been a while since I fought someone who knew what they were doing with a short blade. I hope you don't disappoint me, girl."
'Condescending old bastard!' Dorothea shrieked in her mind, already growing to loathe this arrogant, ancient Number with a fury born of old wounds.
He was acting like her mother had once she had gained a measure of confidence in her skill with a knife; she had beaten Dorothea into the ground mercilessly and almost shattered the confidence she had in her own skill.
It was the process her mother had always referred to as 'tempering.' Once a certain level was reached, the trainee was faced against a vastly superior opponent and then forced to start over from the beginning, relearning the skills and hopefully removing any flaws that had developed in the first go-through. The process was then repeated until the trainee's skills had been perfected.
There were no geniuses in the Ernst Family, so they had to supplement the lack of genius with hard work and skill.
There was no one she hated as much as her bitch of a mother for that fucking 'I-am-so-superior' attitude that she took in the training sessions. The last time Dorothea had trained with Timothea Ernst, the old bitch had said, 'What? And this is the strength of a Knight of Rounds? What a failure of a daughter I have!'
'Grrrr! Just remembering the old hag makes me pissed off!' the Knight of Four raged to herself. She loathed being looked down upon by anyone, despised it with a passion. That her bitch of a mother looked down on her was one thing, but an Eleven? A lowly Number?!
"I'm going to gut you!" she screamed in fury, sending her Exeter charging forward on its Landspinners faster that a Sutherland could ever hope to move. The Guren was quicker still, agilely leaping over her twin slashes before lashing out with the Kaiten Yaibatō.
Knowing that allowing those bedamned rotating teeth to bite into her weapons would spell their end, Dorothea slammed the hilt of a knife into the side of one of the weapons to send it off course while dodging to the side to avoid the second one.
"Excellent judgement!" Mamoru praised her. "Most of the young pups I've have fought would have chosen the safer option to block rather than risking themselves by redirecting and dodging my strikes, losing their weapons in the process. Not bad."
"Will you just shut up and die already!" Dorothea shouted.
"Pardon me. The older generation have a tendency to ramble on." The Japanese man apologised, apparently in complete sincerity. "I shouldn't draw out your death; it wouldn't be polite."
With a wordless howl of fury, Dorothea leapt back into combat with Mamoru, the sheer speed of the two making it impossible for the BK-type Sutherlands or Dorothea's troops to intervene in their fight.
With Nonette
Baring her teeth in a savage smile, the Knight of Nine charged the Bedivere at the Guren MK II the girl declared herself to be the leader of Zero's bodyguards and his personal knight? It would seem that Nonette still had a good eye for talent, one shared by Zero evidently.
To think though, that she'd go so far as to claim a superior position to Bismarck Waldstein, the Britannian Knight of One. The 'Knight of Zero' was it? The old cyclops would definitely snort once he read her report. The one and only person the Knight of One regarded as his superior in a Knightmare was Lady Marianne. While Bismarck was the Emperor's Champion and personal Swordsman, the number of duels he had fought against upstart, arrogant, dilettante Knights who claimed themselves to be superior to Marianne the Flash were both numerous and bloody. Very few had escaped those duels without suffering injury of some sort and they almost always abandoned their Knighthood afterwards.
He ignored those members of the enemy who made such claims, however. The howling of losers was not worth the effort of listening to, after all.
This girl, however, had proven herself to be a powerful and skilled Knightmare pilot, who had defeated at least fifteen Knights in battle, not including Princess Cornelia, who was as skilled as any member of the Rounds aside from Nonette and Bismarck. That made her not only a Triple Ace, but someone for all skilled Knights to be aware of.
Raising one hand, the Bedivere fired all five Finger Harkens on that hand at the crimson machine's legs, aiming to tangle it up. Obviously reading her intent, the Guren easily dodged to one side and raced in close even as the Finger Harkens retracted.
'Clever. She's keeping pace with the lines of my Harkens so that if I fire my other Harkens at her legs again, the chance that they'll get tangled up is low.' Nonette thought in admiration. Really, a scarce minute into the fight and the Red Queen impressed her.
She briefly wondered just how skilled this girl was, how skilled she could become if given time to grow?
Instead of using her Finger Harkens, Nonette charged at the Guren, intending to use the superior size, weight and durability of the Bedivere to smash the Guren to pieces. Or so it looked.
In an instant, the Guren displayed a degree of acrobatic capability unlike any Knightmare she had seen before, barring one, by leaping into the air, soaring over the Bedivere in somersault and landing behind the larger Knightmare in a crouch.
'That thing moves as fast and as agilely as Lady Marianne's Ganymede!' Nonette thought in shock as she skidded her own machine into a sharp turn to face her enemy again. The Third Generation Knightmare Frame Ganymede, despite being powered via a large external battery and being seven tonnes in weight, had danced across the testing tracks and duelling arenas with speed, agility and grace. Despite all of the subsequent Knightmare Frames after it being based on the successful design of the Ganymede, they were almost all made so that anyone could pilot them. The main exceptions being the Bedivere and the Lancelot. And none aside from the Lancelot had the agility capability that the Guren was currently showing.
"You're quick on your feet." She commented aloud.
"This Guren Nishiki is the point of the spear for the Black Knights!" Red Queen retorted. "If it wasn't capable of at least this much, it wouldn't be worthy of the name of Guren!"
"Well said!" Nonette smirked. "Come at me!"
Moving like a blur, the Guren charged the Bedivere, silver arm drawn back and ready to strike. Nonette's eyes narrowed as she regarded that arm. The briefing from Earl Asplund called the weapon it was armed with the 'Radiant Wave Surger', a weapon that could destroy a Knightmare in a single blow, and even stand up to the Lancelot's MVS, something previously thought to be impossible. Theoretically, the MVS should be able to cut any kind of solid matter.
She didn't have a good understanding of what exactly the weapon could do, as it was explained in a bunch of technobabble, so much so that it may very well have been incomprehensible gibberish to her. Damned scientists…
What she did know was that the silver arm was the gimmick, the so-called trick that made the Guren a Knightmare Killer. Defeat that and three-quarters of this duel was wrapped up.
'I wonder if the Shining Luminous will hold up?' the Knight of Nine wondered as she readied the shielding system. Being the prototype of the Blazing Luminous, the Shining Luminous shared its emerald green colouring. The main difference visually was that the Shining Luminous was circular as opposed to a smooth-cornered rhombus. Practically, it still had several problems that had been solved in the Blaze Luminous. Stability and endurance were the two main ones, meaning the shields could not be expanded beyond a certain diameter, and thus size, plus they were nowhere near as resilient to damage as the Blaze Luminous.
"I've got you now!" Red Queen lashed out with her Frame's silver arm, but Nonette stepped back so that all the Guren was grasping was thin air…or so it was until a hidden joint extended the reach of the silver arm by just enough to grab onto the Bedivere's arm, protected only by the Halo Luminous' ten layers.
"Eat this!" the enemy Ace shouted before a red-tinged black energy pulsed from the centre of the Guren's silver arm and crashing against the shielding of the Halo Luminous.
'What the hell?! It's overwhelming the Halo Luminous as if the layers were just made of paper!' Nonette thought incredulously as she scanned the readouts. At the recommended operating power of 60%, the Halo Luminous was being overwhelmed by whatever the hell kind of energy the Guren was using. In ten more seconds, it would break through the shields!
Immediately, the Knight of Rounds dialled up the strength of the Halo Luminous to 80%. There were drawbacks to increasing the shields to that level of power, namely the fact that the drain on the Yggdrasil Drive and Energy Filler would rise drastically and thus, the Bedivere's operational time would sharply decrease in step with that.
Still, it looked as if she had no choice. If she did nothing, then the Radiant Wave Surger would pierce her shield and destroy her Knightmare's arm. Fighting against a high-level opponent with only a single arm was nowhere near close to a desirable circumstance for her, piloting a Sixth/Seventh Generation Knightmare Frame herself or not.
The effect was immediate; the Halo Luminous covering the body of the Bedivere became visible for the first time, shining brightly like a beacon in the night. Looking at it, you could see the Halo Luminous surrounding the large Knightmare like an aura…or like the halos you could see around angels in old Christian stained glass windows and tapestries. It was this that had earned the shielding system its name.
Slowly, the energy released by the Guren's silver arm was pushed back by the light of the Halo Luminous. Then, the Radiant Wave died out and the Guren leapt back, the arm spitting out a cartridge from a slot before presumably loading a new one via an internal system.
"You…you blocked the Radian Wave Surger!" Red Queen sounded truly taken aback. Unsurprising really; anyone would be surprised if their trump card was neutralised. Nonette would probably be no better were she in the younger pilot's shoes.
"Indeed I did." Unlike her confident voice, Nonette's face was displaying a worried expression. With the Halo Luminous active at sixty percent power, the Bedivere's could operate for at least two to three hours, but at eighty percent power, it was just under half an hour, and that was if the Energy Filler was at maximum capacity! As it was, she had depleted twenty percent of the Energy Filler up until this point, meaning that she only had about twenty minutes before the Bedivere ground to a halt and became little more than a useless shell of metal.
'Well then, time to stop playing around.' The Knight of Nine thought grimly. In truth, she could try to solely use the Shining Luminous to fend off the Guren, but after seeing the Guren's trump card in action, she had no confidence that the prototype had any hopes of doing so. It was simply not strong enough.
So then. Relying on the Halo Luminous to hold off the Radiant Wave Surger, she would need to physically overwhelm the Guren (a task easily possible with her Knightmare's superior size and strength) and put it to the ground before using her slash harkens to rip it limb from limb. It was such a shame to do that to such a beautiful machine like the Guren, but needs must when demons drive.
"Let's dance, girlie!" Nonette said as she smashed the Bedivere's fists together.
With Lelouch
'As expected of Nonny.' The exiled prince mused. He was watching the battle between Kallen and Nonette and it had gone pretty much as he had expected. The Guren was swift and agile, dodging the Finger Harken attacks and slow punches of the Bedivere with ease thanks to Kallen's talent and skill, while the Bedivere's halo-like shield system shrugged off the Radiant Wave Surger and the Fork Knife without so much as flickering after Kallen's initial attack.
He made a note to have Rakshata upgrade the Guren's Fork Knife to at least have one blade as a Kaiten Yaibatō, but preferably making the Fork Knife an MVS. Although the Radiant Wave Surger was an astonishingly strong weapon, against a shielding system like the one the Bedivere had, it was not sufficient by itself.
That was something he had noticed about Rakshata's Knightmare designs; all were close combat oriented and all with some sort of single specialised tool to attack with once there. Ranged attacks were, if not neglected, but somewhat lacklustre in comparison. The eccentric scientist had mentioned an all-range type Knightmare made at the same time as the Guren, the Shen Hu, but she had been forced to give it to the Maharaja of the Militarised Zone of India as a way of shutting him up. He had then gifted it to the Chinese Federation, who had locked it away, as it couldn't be piloted by anyone who tried it…
Breaking his mind away from that tangent, Lelouch instead refocussed his attention on the fight before him. That defence shield around the body of the Bedivere was truly amazing, but he remembered talking to Suzaku a couple of times and teasing some information out of him regarding the Lancelot and the Blaze Luminous shields it had on its arms. They were veritable power hogs, and the exiled prince sincerely doubted that this shielding system, which was even more all-encompassing than the Blaze Luminous, could be any less draining.
In fact, he highly suspected that it was even more draining than the Blaze Luminous was. Especially since the shield had become visible to the naked eye, which was almost certainly a result of Nonette increasing the power of the shield after Kallen's initial attack with the Radiant Wave Surger started breaking through. If that was the case, and he was fairly sure it was, it was likely that Nonette was aiming to end this quickly, before her Frame ran out of power.
"Augur." he said into his radio. "Any luck?"
"None." His lover's voice said grimly. "I can't pierce that shield, even with this Anti-Knightmare Sniper Rifle. I'd need something like the Raikō's main cannon to break through it. Earlier, before you blew up the tanker, a Burai unloaded a full clip into it and it didn't take as much as a single scratch to the paintwork."
This news caused a thoughtful frown to cross across the former prince's lips. An Anti-Knightmare Sniper Rifle was, as the name suggested, designed to eliminate Knightmares, or any kind of enemy, mechanical or otherwise. That being said, however, most designers focussed on it being able to accurately shoot out the joints of other Knightmares to disable them rather than piercing through the armour. The AKSR that C.C. used was one such weapon.
It was a weapon focused on accuracy over destructive power.
'Perhaps I should look into something with a bit more power behind it, particularly since, even if we deal with Nonny and the Bedivere here, there's still the Lancelot to worry about.' Lelouch thought absently before shaking his head, that was a thought for the future. He had a battle to win in the present.
"Understood. Move to position Beta 5 and intercept the reinforcements lead by Sir Dalton." He instructed. Keeping C.C. in overwatch over the battlefield was useless if her weapon was incapable of piercing the enemy's armour. Rather than waste a useful asset, he would have her take care of the stream of reinforcements that Cornelia's frantic Knight would no doubt be leading from the Administration Building.
"Roger-dodger." She drawled. "Make sure queenie there doesn't go down."
"That was my intention from the start." The raven-haired boy drawled back. Kallen's skill and potential as a Knightmare Pilot was far too great to let her fall in a battle like this. Not to mention the thought of her being defeated left twinges in his heart, but he did not voice that aloud.
Switching to Kallen's frequency, he began issuing the first plan he'd managed to concoct while watching the fight.
"Q-1, you are not using all of your weapons." He said sternly. "Use the Custom Handgun to undermine her Knightmare's foothold and stability. Also, even if it absorbs energy, the shield does not counter inertia."
"Got it!" Kallen roared back, immediately putting his instruction -more like advice, really- to the test by firing the powerful Custom Handgun mounted on her left arm directly at the concrete ground. Unlike the AKSR, this gun was designed for short-to-mid range firefights meaning the bullets were shot with a much greater power and velocity behind them. Of course that meant that their accuracy would suffer at longer ranges, but that was neither here nor there. As such, the bullets that it spat out chewed through the concrete underneath the larger Knightmare like a sledgehammer crushing a block of sugar.
"Oi, where are you aiming?" Nonette asked in amusement before the large Knightmare shook and stumbled on the ground as the bullets turned the solid concrete into gravel. Had the Landspinners been active, it would have been an ineffective move, but as the Bedivere was stationary, the weakening of its foothold was effective.
Lelouch grinned wickedly, as expected of Kallen; she only needed a few words to understand what he was driving at. The girl was truly a diamond in the rough and a truly lucky find.
'Just like in martial arts; break the stance to weaken the opponent.' the former prince smirked to himself. The basics were the same in regular hand-to-hand combat or with Knightmares. "Q-1, chaff dispersal, then swing around to her six." he instructed. "Topple her."
"Right!" Kallen replied viciously. Part of the standard equipment for all of the Guren-pattern Knightmares was a Chaff Smoke Dispenser mounted on the back, although it was not one that most of the pilots -Todoh, the Four Holy Sword and Kallen- would think about using in battle ordinarily. Lelouch, however, always thought of every resource he had available and made myriad plans based on those, choosing the one that had the highest probability of working given the current situation. His genius intellect was currently working in overdrive to analyse everything he learned about his foe and build a plan to counter it on the fly.
The Guren started gushing out chaff from its back as it moved, dodging the punches and Finger Harkens of the Bedivere as it surrounded the larger Knightmare in a thick cloud of chaff, rendering most of its passive sensors and even the Factsphere Sensor temporarily useless.
"Why you tricky…!" Nonette growled. The Bedivere made a swift hundred and eighty degree turn as if expecting an attack from the rear. She was right, but Kallen had followed Lelouch's orders to the letter; she'd finished dispersing the cloud of chaff before circling around to the back of Nonette's Knightmare, which meant that the Bedivere actually turned its back on the Guren.
Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Kallen leapt into the air and slammed the feet of the Guren into the small of the back of the Bedivere, just below the bottom of the cockpit. The shield flared brightly as it absorbed the kinetic force of the Guren's strike, but as Lelouch had correctly theorised, it did nothing to block the inertia and weight of the Guren slamming into it. Had the ground been solid and stable, it wouldn't have mattered much, but as it was, the Bedivere tipped forward at the impact before faceplanting onto the ground with a loud 'BANG!'
The Guren leapt off of the fallen machine and retreated back to stand beside Lelouch, who was grinning like a loon.
"Well done, Q-1!" he praised her. "Don't let your guard down though; the Knight of Nine isn't that easily beaten."
Sure enough, the Bedivere was pushing itself up. Given how heavy the large Knightmare was, Lelouch was betting that the servo-motors were quite strained. He was rather glad that Nonette had come out with minimal armament this time around, as it let Kallen gain experience against a foe that was stronger than her own machine when said machine was the Guren MKII. While having pride in her skills and ability was crucial, Lelouch didn't want Kallen to become overly proud to the point of hubris. A bit of humility did wonders for refining talent.
Just now, Kallen had been stunned and taken off-guard that her main weapon didn't one-shot the enemy. Up until this point, only the Lancelot and its pilot had proven to be her equal and, despite his warnings to her, Kallen had only half-believed him regarding the Bedivere and its pilot. Nonette had stopped her cold thanks to her skill and powerful Knightmare Frame and had even put her on the defensive for a couple of minutes thanks to the strength of that odd shield.
'Sorry for the tough love, Kallen.' he smiled ruefully. 'You'll thank me for it later.'
"Zero, what should I do now?" Kallen asked worriedly. "My Radiant Wave Surger can't get through that damn shield."
"Calmly does it Q-1." He said in a reassuring tone. "Our purpose here isn't to defeat the Britannians en-masse, simply bleed their military forces a bit before retreating. You are single-handedly holding back something that could cause serious trouble to the rest of our forces; that is your job today. Until Augur fires her rifle, we're going to keep her busy. OK?"
"Yessir!" she barked in response.
"You really went and did it now…" the Knight of Nine growled as she finally stood her Knightmare up again. "Well, that won't work again!"
Lelouch paused for a moment as the distinctive bark of an AKSR registered to his external microphones and he raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. Evidently Cornelia's oldest Knight of Honour was a lot more Johnny-on-the-spot than he had predicted. He'd have to update his estimation of Dalton's worst case scenario preparedness, as well as the alacrity of his response times when Cornelia was in danger.
"Q-1, it sounds as if Sir Dalton has decided to grace us with his presence." Lelouch announced over his machine's external speakers. "I believe that your dance with Lady Enneagram is at an end."
"But…!" he could hear the reluctance in Kallen's voice.
"Clam yourself, Red Queen." He said with a soothing tone. "You will have other opportunities to test your skill against her. For the moment, we will simply have to fall back."
"Do you actually think I'm going to let you leave?" the Knight of Rounds asked darkly. "Dream on."
Ignoring her, the exiled prince turned his radio to a different frequency. "Zero to R-1. Is it ready?"
"Ready and waiting, K-1." R-1 replied
"Start the fireworks after counting to five." He smirked. Lelouch then pressed a button on a console next to his right control stick that lit up a red light on similar consoles in all Black Knights and JLF Knightmares so they knew what was about to happen.
"As ordered." The Black Knight replied and five seconds later, the sound of a button being pressed could be heard.
At once, every single warehouse and shoreline building in the port blew up in a spectacular series of explosions that tore into the unwary Britannian units, shredding Sutherlands into pieces like soggy tissue paper. Most of them belonged to the unit assigned to Dorothea, but at least one of Cornelia's Royal Guard was caught up in it as well.
"What the…?!" Nonette gasped.
"I think you have enough to be worrying about aside from us, Knight of Nine." Lelouch said mockingly. "Let's go, Q-1. We have-"
He was cut off by the bark of a Battle Rifle that hit the ground near where the Kokuten was standing. Looking around, the three Knightmares saw a surprising sight…a Burai-Kai.
This one, however, was not pained in the olive and grey of the JLF, nor was it painted the in black of the Black Knights. Instead, it was painted a light sky blue, with white mountain stripes on the wrists, ankles and at the waist. Painted in white on top of the red retractable armour plating over the Factsphere sensor was a single Japanese kanji: 誠.
"Sincerity…?" Lelouch whispered in puzzlement.
"In the name of the Neo Shinsengumi!" a voice bellowed from the Burai-Kai as more Burai and Burai-Kai appeared behind the lead unit. "Zero! Red Queen! Knight of Nine! You will be put to death! Aku! Soku! Zan!"
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Next Chapter: The Reborn Wolves of Mibu
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