Back at the Clovis's mobile headquarters men and women were running around preparing to launch the Lancelot, the worlds first seventh generation Knightmare frame. As soon as the greenlight was given the trailer that housed the mecha opened up and the Lancelot came out into the sun. It was covered in a huge black sheet which hid the magnificent Knightmare frame.
"Advance unit weapon, Z-01, Lancelot," Cecile said, "now activating, now activating. Releasing hatch, Z-01, Lancelot, stand by for activation."
Preparations were continuing for the Lancelot inside the trailer, Suzaku was changing into his knightmare flight suit carefully avoiding the injuries that he suffered both in his fight with Lelouch and the shot from his own allies.
"Did you read the manual?" Cecile asked over the intercom.
"More or less," Suzaku answered.
"Well done. You scored very high in the simulator."
"Look, about what you said before…" Suzaku asked as he started walking out of the trailer.
"It's possible but the possibility is close to zero," Cecile said.
"But not actually zero." Suzaku replied.
"That's true but still I don't want you doing anything reckless. The new system doesn't have an escape mechanism installed." Cecile answered.
"Right, I understand Miss Cecile." Suzaku replied. Part of him wondered why a Knightmare frame as advanced as the Lancelot didn't have something so basic. The hatches were released and the massive black sheet dropped to the ground revealing a white knightmare frame. Suzaku was in aw at the knightmare that he was going to pilot.
"So, this is it?" Suzaku asked.
"Yes, the experimental weapon that was developed by us in the Advance Special Envoy Engineering Corps, the Lancelot."
"It's the world's first 7th generation knightmare frame," Lloyd said with glee, "All right Suzaku, shall we proceed with the initial start-up?"
"Initial start-up proceeding from phase 20," Cecile said.
The Lancelot quickly got the equipment it needed for the battle placed in and more preparations were swiftly completed. Suzaku went into the cockpit of the Lancelot as he mentally prepared himself and he placed his knightmare key in started up the frame. The trailers were moved out of the way for the Lancelot as the chords were released from the Lancelot, a quick check showed that everything was running normal for the Lancelot. Suzaku was ready to go and turn the tide of battle.
"M.E. Boost!" Suzaku said. The Lancelot quickly powered up and was ready.
"Lancelot, launch!" Cecile called.
The Lancelot launched from its starting point and rushed forward towards the Shinjuku Ghetto. Lloyd was pleased at the sight of his baby going of to war as Cecile covered her eyes from the dust.
"Full throttle right out of the gate, huh?" Lloyd said happily.
The Lancelot continued onward without any issues and Suzaku was amazed by the advanced specs of the knightmare frame he was piloting. There was nothing Suzaku had experienced like this before.
"It better than what the manual said," Suzaku commented, "with this…maybe I can find and help Lelouch and that girl…please be okay Lelouch."
Unbeknownst to the Lancelot's crew a pair of hooded figures were watching the new frame's launch. The taller of the two put his phone to his ear and stated. "This is Flint. Looks like Clovis launched a new white knightmare frame. according to Rai its an unknown make and model. And its damn fast."
"It didn't seem to have weapons on it when it was launched but be carful we don't know what it has on it." Rei added
"Thanks for the intel Flint, Rei." Lelouch's voice echoed out of the phone. "You guys move into position to intercept Clovis and prevent him from escaping. Once I deal with this, I'll join you. My brother will not escape justice today.
"Gentlemen, I just received a new piece of intel, the enemy just launched an experimental white Knightmare frame with unknown specks. It's most likely a six-generation frame. Engage with caution we don't know what its capable of." Lelouch said over the coms to all of the men of Ohgi's group. In one of the Sutherland cockpits, Tamaki gave a smirk as he thought that he could take on the knew frame himself. They were kicking Britannia's ass all day what was one new knightmare going to do. At that moment the Lancelot came into view of Tamaki's Southerland.
"Huh, is that it?" Tamaki asked as the Lancelot came closer. "It doesn't look like much"
Tamaki was unable to act as the Lancelot quickly struck Tamaki's knightmare frame with a powerful kick destroying the knightmare. Tamaki luckily was able to eject in time to escape unharmed. Meanwhile Lelouch was looking over his monitor doing his best to figure out where Clovis's reinforcements would arrive. His musings were interrupted has his radio cracked to life one more.
"This is B-group," One of Ohgi's solders said on the other line, "confirm signs of the enemy!"
Lelouch nodded now knowing where his enemy was coming from. Lelouch placed the radio over his ear, "What's the status of our forces?"
"All four units are down but everyone is alive. They were able to eject in time." said the same solder as before
"How many units. It the white Knightmare alone?" Lelouch asked.
"Just one…one unit." Said the solder with both fear and disbelief in his voice
"Just one?" Lelouch asked in surprise. He was expecting some form of combat escort for a new frame that had never been live tested before.
"I think it's that new model, never seen anything like it—huh, it's here?!" the voice on the other end of the Radio cried out in shock.
Meanwhile, the Lancelot was quickly tearing threw the Sutherlands piloted by Ohgi's crew members one by one, like a hot knife in butter. Suzaku was using it's sensors and saw more attackers who were pointing their machine guns at him. Suzaku quickly activated the Blaze Luminous, which created a shield around the Lancelot as the rebels started to open fire on their opponent. To the surprise of Ohgi's followers none of their rounds did any damage to the frame as the shield did its job and protected the machine.
"What the…?" One of the members said, "It can deflect bullets!"
Clovis was looking at the monitor displaying the battle that he was commanding. He was pleased with the fact that the Lancelot was able to do so much against their enemies. However he disliked the fact that he had to use Lloyd's new invention to do so as now Schneizel would have one over him
"My goodness," Clovis said with annoyance in his voice, "now I owe my older brother a debt that I did not want," Clovis sighed, "oh well, it is for the best and it's a small price so as long it gets the job done, I don't care how it's done."
In one of the trailers nearby, Lloyd, Cecile and their staff were monitoring the Lancelot's movements and action, Lloyd was very pleased and Cecile was impressed with Suzaku's piloting skills and the results of said skill.
"Amazing," Cecile said, "these readings are even higher than predicted."
"Yes, and our pilot is taking this all very seriously," Lloyd said smugly as he pushed his glasses.
In one of Sutherland's cockpit, Lelouch was quickly informed of the current situation. It seemed that the tides of battle had turned once again.
"It can deflect bullets?" Lelouch asked over the radio trying to get confirmation on what he had just heard .
"Yeah!" One of the members said on the other line, "What can we do…huh, hey Ishida!"
Lelouch received static again s another stolen Southerland was destroyed. This caused Lelouch to narrow his eyes and clench his teeth in frustration.
"What the hell's going on?" Lelouch asked himself, "Is it really some sort of new knightmare model that Clovis had? If so, then I wonder who the pilot is."
Back with Suzaku, he continued to defeat all who tried to stop him in his tracks with minimal effort due to the speed and strength. Of his knightmare frame.
"Good," Suzaku said "I can do this, with the Lancelot; I can end this pointless battle!"
Suzaku decimated more knightmares that were piloted by resistance members. The resistance members did their best to stop Suzaku. However he countered all their moves with ease as the Lancelot was in a league of its own compared to Sutherlands. Suzaku forced each and every knightmare pilot he came across to eject. However Suzaku never went after the pilots after they ejected seeing that they were no longer a threat to his Britannian masters and the fact that in his eyes more death was unnecessary.
Lelouch clenched his teeth, "It's just one unit and that one unit is able to decimate them one by one…a new model, huh?" Lelouch thought about it, before a thought came to mind. They couldn't fight this thing like a regular knightmare frame, however they could fight it like assassins. They just needed to find the chink in the armor. A new idea quickly formed in the young assassin's head Lelouch spoke on the radio, "Is there anyone that can give me location of the new enemy knightmare?"
"I can," another member of the resistance stated .
Meanwhile, Ohgi screeched as the Lancelot rushed in destroying the knightmare he was piloting which forced him to eject. Suzaku continued on in his assault against the resistance members in their stolen Sutherlands. The Lancelot launched itself high into the sky and fired its Slash Harkens at the knightmares around in the vicinity quickly impaling them. Suzaku was in cockpit and nodded as he getting more used with the knightmare that he was piloting In the cockpit, Suzaku was still focused enduring the wound he was recovering from. At that moment Suzaku received several signatures of knew enemies. What he say were a few Sutherlands and the red one-armed Glasgow. Unbeknownst to him the center knightmare frame was piloted by Lelouch.
Suzaku narrowed his eyes, "Hmm, more of them. Okay…"
Lelouch in the cockpit of the Sutherland spoke on the radio, "All of you, you know what to do get into position, I'm going to see if there is a weakness in it's shield nothing is impenetrable." To that Lelouch rushed forward his knightmare dual wielding massive shotguns which began to fire at the Lancelot. Has this was going on Lelouch began to concentrate and focus just as Conner had taught him to, the gift of his ancestors flowing to life in his eyes, the eagle vision. All around him the energy of the universe was clear to him. The energy of the shield was wrapped around the Lancelot, except for a single point just under its power core the small of the Knightmare's back. Nearly impossible to hit in the middle of a battle but was the perfect point to take it down. At that moment the Lancelot rushed forward before using its speed to deliver a powerful punch to Lelouch's Southerland. However unlike most pilots who would try to either block or dodge an attack, Lelouch shifted the knightmare into a stance and quickly grabbed the Lancelot's arm as it tried to strike before sticking it's leg out. Using the Lancelot's own momentum Lelouch managed to bring the Lancelot to the ground. Then Lelouch prepped the wrist slash harkens turning them into makeshift wrist blades. However before he could capitalize on the downed knightmare the Lancelot was back up and struck out with its fists, which Lelouch was only barely able to parry.
Suzaku who took a moment to recover from being judo flipped in a war machine asked "are you the one? Are you the one in command?"
Lelouch in his Sutherland didn't answer as he came to terms with the fact that Suzaku was both alive and the pilot of the unknown knightmare frame. Lelouch quickly wondered how Suzaku was in a Knightmare frame let alone an experimental model. Lelouch shook his head as he thought to himself questions for later,
The two knightmare frames quickly attacked each other once again. Lelouch knew that he was in the inferior knightmare and keep to the defensive. The two knightmares pushed each other back and Lelouch's Sutherland was able to quickly throw and land a slash with the impromptu wrist blade as it countered a punch that the Lancelot blocked, however said attack did little more than superfluous damage. The Lancelot countered that attack by throwing a punch as well that hit, however without momentum was unable to do as much damage as before. The Sutherland was pushed back by the punch but Lelouch was able to direct the knightmare to stay on its feet and drew its machine gun. Suzaku, quickly activated the Lancelot's Blaze Luminous to create a shield as Lelouch fired with his machine gun. The Lancelot shot one of its wrist Slash Harkens which Lelouch was able to block with his machine gun, though he lost the weapon. Before Suzaku could retract the cable Lelouch grabbed the harken preventing it from retracting.
"He grabbed it?" Suzaku asked in shocked. This pilot was fighting unlike any knightmare pilot he had seen so far, using Judo and turning slash harkens into makeshift katars were things that he had never seen before in any video on knightmare combat. However this momentary laps allowed for the Southerland to pull hard on the cable pulling the knightmare forward which caused Suzaku to activate the blaze luminous. While doing this Lelouch spun around in his Southerland and tried to stab the weak point in the shield and frame. However he hit the angle wrong and was unable to hit the angel just right preventing him form ending the Lancelot In the cockpit of the Sutherland, Lelouch narrowed his eyes and clenched his teeth. at that moment he heard from the radio that everyone else was in position. Looks like it was time for plan b. To that Lelouch threw the Lancelot to the ground before turning and fleeing.
"What, you're running?" Suzaku asked "You coward!" The Lancelot began to follow after the Sutherland which grabbed another machine gun from the destroyed frames around it. Lelouch in the Sutherland continued to dodge the Slash Harken attacks of the Lancelot which followed him like a dog after a cat. At that moment the first part of Lelouch's plan came into effect as several explosions went off all around the two knightmare frames causing a large amount of smoke around the two frames preventing Suzaku from seeing what was going on. However for Lelouch years of training to fight in smoke and his Eagle vision prevented him from his vision being obscured and moved into position.
"Dammit, I lost him," Suzaku said as he frantically began to look around for where his opponent was to fight him, "Where is he?"
As the smoke cleared a new sound drew Suzaku's attention as several large and thankfully empty buildings had their fronts broken out showing other stolen Southerland. The machines each tossed a chaos mine into the ruble in such a way that when they exploded, they forced the debris which was now hyper heated due to the properties of the explosive strait into the Lancelot. Suzaku was able to activate the Lancelot's shields in time to prevent the vehicle from being destroyed. However the amount of super heated material that it had to block from the makeshift shrapnel bombs quickly drained the energy reserves that the Lancelot had left. Guns began to fire from the Sutherlands at a rapid pace draining what little shields that it had left. Suzaku realizing that the leader of the terrorists, whoever he was, had managed to out maneuver the Lancelot, leading it into a trap to deal with the blaze luminous. With in a few minutes he would run out of energy and the worlds first 7th generation knightmare frame would be nothing more than a massive paper weight. However he did see one building already partially destroyed that was free of an ambusher and launched his knightmare into the third story, which wall was already missing. Suzaku who was so desperate to escape so that he could find his best friend didn't notice was that the other Sutherlands stopped firing as he entered the building. Has Suzaku moved forward in the building he noticed that a part of the floor was missing large enough for a knightmare frame.
Suzaku looked down into the massive hole in the floor and saw Sutherland that he was fighting before hand on the first floor with a machine gun in hand. Suzaku was surprised as Lelouch started to shoot through the upper floors around the Lancelot while never hitting the frame itself. Lelouch then quickly moved away as the floors above home started to crumble and collapsed due to the damage that Lelouch had caused when he fired on the floors. The Lancelot was caught up in the surprise strategy and fell through the building quickly and on reaction activating the blaze luminous not knowing if it would help in this scenario on instinct as it crash landed on the ground with its back to the sky. Suzaku felt dizzy from what had just happened and was unable to act for a few second. Quicky capitalizing on the stunned Lancelot, Lelouch jabbed his slash harken into the week point into the armor. At that moment the blaze luminous shut off as the gears that kept the shield up were shattered. Lelouch then fired two more slash harkens into the knew joints of the Lancelot essentially hamstringing the vehicle so it could only move by crawling. Seeing that for now the Lancelot was permanently out of the battle Lelouch moved away for his downed friend. Part of him knew that he would regret this later but he couldn't bring himself to kill his friend.
Meanwhile Cecile was franticly calling Suzaku and asked "Suzaku are you alright"
"I'm fine." Suzaku responded before adding under his breath "The enemy didn't think that I was worth killing." What would it take for him to make up for his past mistakes Suzaku thought to himself.
"We sent a team to retrieve the Lancelot, despite your defeat you did enough damage to the terrorists that they are retreating. The battle is over" Cecile responded.
"At least I did some good, stopping all this pointless violence' Suzaku said to himself before asking. "why hasn't Lloyd complained about the damage to his Lancelot"
"He will once he regains consciousness" Cecile replied sadly net wanting Suzaku to go threw the epic tongue lashing he was about to get.
Activating the radio once more Lelouch asked "The white knightmare is down, I repeat the white knightmare is down. What is the status on our remaining troops."
"We're still all alive as far as I can tell" Ohgi answered
"However, only six of us have active knightmare frames not including you and me" Kallen answered. " If Britannia has another surprise for us, we won't last long."
Lelouch silently cursed to himself before saying to all his forces "Q1 is right. We can't do any more here. Your orders are to pull out and protect the remaining civilians, avoid combat at all costs."
"What about you" another member of the resistance asked.
"Earlier in the fight Clovis left himself open." Lelouch answered " I'm going to see if I can cut the head off of the snake. Make sure to keep the recordings from your Sutherlands, even if Clovis survives today he will be exposed for his crimes." To that a good amount of cheer erupted out from the resistance fighters. With his phone open, Lelouch said to his fellow assassins "The time has come to put an end to Clovis."