*says the rewritten chapters are the ones with RW*

*Deletes all the chapters*

Pulled a sneaky one on ya.

Data File 0998: Trebuchet Railgun

The RGDS-92 Mk 4.1, also known as the Trebuchet Railgun, was created as an upgraded model of the standard Plasma Railgun weapon Hammond Titans used, and is a shoulder-mounted weapon for IS/Titan Hybrids. The Trebuchet is a dark green painted, plasma/energy based projectile firing weapon, with a one bullet clip and 23 second charge time till fully powered, but can be charged longer for extra power at the cost of a longer reload and cooldown time. However, like its predecessor, it can fire during the charging time for a lesser amount of danger. The Trebuchet is too powerful to be a handheld weapon, so it was resorted to a shoulder mounted weapon. The railgun fires a plasma/energy projectile, but when in a bad spot it can launch a 97mm explosive tungsten round at or around mach 1.6, if at full charge. The weapon requires a mandatory 3 second reload after firing to load a new round and for the barrel to close, cool, then reopen. This railgun is expensive to make, but easy to maintain, so many are still in service. While there are reports, it has been extensively denied by the Hammond nation that a double-barrelled version exists…

The Dorms (The Night Before the Fight)

Gio was lying in his bed, probably somewhere between sleeping and being awake. While he was prone to having some long nights, this night was one of the worst types. He was awake because his mind was giving him trouble. Not like a headache, more like a mental migraine.

Gio kept having nightmares. His mind wasn't making up stuff that would scare him. It replayed what Gio had already seen. Over and over and over, almost breaking him whenever these nights happened.

And when morning came, Ichika had swore he heard someone crying.

Hangar 5A, couple of minutes before the fight

Gio stood in the hangar, wearing a light grey IS pilot suit. On his left hand was his IS in closed form, his right hand twirling a small knife. He spun the knife around, threw it up into the air, and caught it. Gio then paused, quickly turning around and throwing the knife...

...right at Chifuyu Orimura. Who caught the knife easily. She inspected it, noticing it was a standard issue hunting knife. She walked over the Gio, with Ichika and Houki in tow. "So, you throw knives at people often?" She asked jokingly.

"More often than a kid probably should." Gio muttered, but shrugged anyway. The teacher, Maya Yamada, held a tablet, ready to scan Gio's IS the minute he revealed it. While mainstream news media outlets were able to put camera crews and reporters in Hammond during their military parades, and had seen Hammond IS models, the full extent of them were unknown. At least, until today, hopefully.

Which probably explained why Miss Yamada was staring at Gio so aggressively, she was going to be the first non-Hammond analyzer to get specs on a Hammond IS/Titan hybrid. In the world of IS, that was pretty much equal to being the first person on the moon.

"So, you want your knife back?" Chifuyu asked, holding it by the blade.

"Nah, keep it. I got nowhere to put it right now." Gio answered, and turned back to the hangar opening. He raised his left hand, which was in a fist, and was engulfed in flames. When the flames disappeared, his IS had taken the place where Gio was standing.

Maya quickly raised her tablet, and quickly scanned the IS. What she got back was astounding.

IS Core: H-009 (Hammond Core)

Designation: Firestorm (Shift 1 of 1, Form 1 of 4)

Weapons: Predator Cannon, wrist mounted 40mm Cannon, Trebuchet Railgun, Thermite Thrower, Fire Shield, Flaming Broadsword

Defense stats: 5,000 points(Rechargeable shield), 22,000 points(Regular shield)

Maya froze, reading and rereading what her device. While she tried to stop reading the tablet, Gio's IS floated up a little bit, and when they heard the jets start powering up, the group ran to their viewing area. Gio, meanwhile, waited for the greenlight to go. And when he got it, shot out of the hangar and into the arena field. When he appeared, Gio got a good look at his opponent.

Cecilia was, of course, not fretting at all about this duel. While the defense aspects of an IS/Titan Hybrid were unknown, the weapons they used were similar to that of the Titans of Hammond. She scanned Gio's IS, and was shocked to see that no data was able to be displayed.

"So...how are you?" Gio asked, not holding any weapons at the ready.

"I'm fine, thank you for asking." Cecilia responded, keeping her shock hidden. "Nice to see you keep your manners on the battlefield, you must really trying to impress me."

"Yeah, let's go with that."

Cecilia hefted her sniper rifle out, pointing it at Gio. Gio took this time to get a quick scan of the other IS, Blue Tears was its name. A long range fighter, with access to six BITS. The scans showed four were separate drone parts, but he had no data on the other two.

"Just so you know, I won't go easy on you. And, as a sign of mercy, I will allow you to apologize for that comment you made to me yesterday. I will accept it, along with your surrender." Cecilia shouted at him.

"Unlike your country in Malaya 1942, I will not surrender while I hold the superior force!" Gio retorted.
"There were other factors in that!"

"Maybe so, I didn't finish reading the Wikipedia page!"

"Were you looking up British defeats just to make jokes at me?!"

"...maybe." Gio muttered, then sneezed, which sounded a lot like Jubilee somehow.

"That's Canadian!"

"Oh, fuck you then!"

The announcer introduced the two pilots, everyone was at the edge of their seat. But inside the viewing area, Chifuyu was trying to coax Maya to give her the tablet with the info of Gio's IS.

"Maya, it can't be bad. Just hand me the tablet." Chifuyu said, trying to pull the tablet away.

"It is! It's absolutely horrific what Ms. Alcott is up against! She has no chance!" Maya cried back.

"Maya, are you discounting a student?"

"No, but...Nevermind, you read it." She gave in, giving the tablet to Chifuyu.

Chifuyu sighed, and grabbed the tablet. While she was looking over the design, she grabbed her coffee, and started to drink. When she read the weapons and defense specs, she spat out her coffee right into Ichika's face.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" They both shouted, for different reasons. Houki, who was drinking some water, read off the tablet as well. Her drink also ended up on Ichika's face.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" They both said, again, for different reasons. Ichika wiped his face off, then took the tablet as well. "Well, this certainly is something worth spitting about."

Back in the arena, the two pilots readied their weapons. Cecilia with her sniper, Gio with his railgun, which was still charging after all this time.

"3…2...1...Begin!"

Cecilia opened up with her sniper shots, Gio dodging them with ease. He raised his left arm up, firing the 40mm cannon that was connected to it. The shots weren't accurate, but they were still a threat. Cecilia dodged the shots, and fired back with equal power. Gio raised his right hand, the fire shield igniting in front of him and melting the shots away.

"Umm, Ms. Orimura, I have a question." Houki asked in the viewing area.

"And that would be?" the instructor asked back.

"How's Gio melting plasma shots?"

Chifuyu stared at the screen, not saying anything, for she did not know how Gio was doing that either.

Back on the field, Gio dispelled the fire shield, and brought out the Predator Cannon. He aimed at Cecilia, and let loose a hailstorm of lead. Cecilia flew away from the shots, and Gio's bullet trailed behind her like an anti-aircraft cannon. She launched her BITS, hoping to distract the enemy with them. The small blue drones flew towards Gio, who fired at them with the Predator. Cecilia took this as an opening, and flew towards Gio. Her chance improved greatly when she saw him turn away. As she got closer, she realized she had seen a Trebuchet on Gio's IS.

Then she realized that the Trebuchet hadn't fired all match. And that the gun swiftly turned towards her. In the viewing room, the group watched on a giant screen as Cecilia flew closer to Gio and saw the second she realized her mistake.

The railgun fired, and the instant it did Cecilia was shot across the arena. She hit the ground first, creating a giant trench, and hit the arena wall with a sickening CRUNCH. Gio quickly disposed the remaining BITS, his Predator turning them to lead filled scrap. He turned back to where Cecilia was. While Cecilia's IS had 750 shield points, she now had only 24. She hadn't taken a single hit during the match, and now she was almost down and out. She staggered to stand up, her IS was okay, and Cecilia could feel the concussion coming on. She looked up at the Hammond pilot, he really hadn't taken much damage. His rechargeable shield slowly regained its strength, and his regular shield hadn't even been touched.

"Ms. Orimura, it would appear this match is going to Gio." Ms. Yamada stated, looking at the stat points of the two pilots. Ichika and Houki thought the same thing.

"I knew that. This match was over from the start." Chifuyu stated blandly, like she was bored.

"He does have an impressive shield amount, and his weapons are excellent-" Ms. Yamada started, but was interrupted by Chifuyu pulling a tablet out, and pulling up a video and moving it onto the main screen. The three others watched, it was a security tape of Arena 6 from a couple days back. They watched as the third years trained, get interrupted by Gio, then summarily destroyed by him in the time span of about 10 minutes.

"I watched this before the school semester began, and I thought about showing Alcott...But I decided Gio needed her to shut up about Hammond and prove himself to Alcott." Chifuyu explained.

"Ms. Orimura, why would Gio want that? I mean, he's pretty much established himself by doing all that we just watched." Houki asked, Ichika nodding in agreement.

Chifuyu moved the screen back to the fight. "Just watch."

Back in the arena, Gio moved closer to Cecilia, "Hey, you good in there?" He shouted to the crater in the wall that was Cecilia and Blue Tears.

Cecilia walked out, her IS not damaged, but the fight wasn't over yet. She looked horrible though, and angry.

"YOU BASTARD! HOW DARE YOU TRASH ME LIKE THIS!" She shouted, and Gio didn't need a PHD to know he probably caused something to come loose. "I AM CECILIA ALCOTT! REPRESENTATIVE CONTENDER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM! I WILL NOT BE OUTDONE BY SOME LUCKY SHIT-WILLED POWDERKEGIAN!"

At that, Chifuyu winced. Everyone turned to her, looking quizzically. Chifuyu sighed, "Hammond is the Balkan countries united under one government, and really that was what got everyone behind them in the first place, a union to establish peace in a very war torn area of the world. But the Balkans have been known to be areas where major conflicts started, or was the reason for doing so. So they were given the term "The Powder Keg of Europe". The Hammond Republic hates when their people are relegated to this term, and the word "powderkegian" is synonymous with hate for the Balkans."

Houki shivered, "Does that mean…?"

"Cecilia basically just called Gio something equivalent to the N-word, with the hard 'R'."

The group turned towards the arena, and waited.

Meanwhile, Cecilia was still throwing a temper tantrum about losing. "I HAVE WORKED HARD ALL MY LIFE TO GET HERE! AND ALL YOU DID WAS DEFEAT FOUR IS'S!? THAT ISN'T FAIR AT ALL!"

"I don't think I follow." Gio responded.

"Allow me to explain, you sorry excuse for cannon fodder. My country is great and powerful, and your sorry excuse for a union, that only copies the great and powerful, that we call the Hammond Republic is nothing more than mercenary group with extra people. You may defeat four IS pilots, but all of your pilots are inferior even to the most green IS pilots from Alaskan Treaty countries!"

"So?" Gio responded. He seemed calm, but the viewing area screen showed that his brain was giving off some crazy readings.

"Do you have a brain, or have all those wars destroyed your capability to have cognitive thought? You would have to defeat a BATTALION of ISs to get to my level or even be close! I AM THE SUPERIOR! SO BOW DOWN YOU WARMONGERING, BULLET SPEWING, ISLAMOPHOBIC, ANTI-SEMITIC POWDERKEGIAN!" She finished, panting hard. Cecilia wiped her eyes, staring at the Hammond pilot.

It was only then she realized she had little shield left, was facing a Hammond IS/Titan Hybrid, and had pretty much just insulted everything he fought for.

Actually, scratch that. She would probably have been better off doing that instead.

"Prepare a coffin for Alcott. Also, someone get the UK's prime minister on the phone." Was all Chifuyu said, looking down at the situation.

"Ms. Orimura, is Gio going to kill Cecilia?" Houki asked.

"Hopefully not, but if he does I hope he can bring her back to life so I can kill her for that choice of language she used."

Suddenly, the screen gave off multiple warning signs in almost every language. The warning system started blaring, and the shutters in the arena closed the arena off from the spectators.

"Warning, Threat Level B, spectators need to evacuate immediately. All instructors, report for threat suppression." The system report, relaying it over the PA system. "All public access is to be closed after evacuations are completed."

"Chifuyu, what's happening?!" Ichika shouted.

"I...don't know." She responded, not bothering to reprimand Ichika about not calling her Ms. Orimura.

On the field, Cecilia was still staring at Gio. Her eyes couldn't move away from the IS, she was locked in place by fear. The IS was glowing with a dark red hue, and Gio raised his right hand. The hand ignited, and Gio seemed to grasp something. He pulled back, as he was a broadsword of pure flame came out. He spun it, and thrusted it into the ground. As it hit the arena floor, a wave of black void shot out in every direction. The void hit the group, blinding them.

When she opened their eyes, Chifuyu was greeted with an overlook of a burning city. She looked around, seeing she was standing in pretty beat up building, probably an old apartment complex. Chifuyu was in a very open floor, the only thing blocking her vision was a stairwell and the occasional column holding the floor above them up. She looked out into the city, watching a sporadic AA fire lit up the sky, and the crack of small arms fire was heard occasionally. Chifuyu looked to her right, and saw a group of soldiers were staring out through a large hole in the building. She moved towards the group, and saw there were three soldiers wearing standard Iraqi Army issue uniform. They had a machine gun pointed down at the streets below, one of the them had an RPG on his back. Chifuyu was still trying to understand what was happening when the soldiers shouted something in arabic, and fired their machine gun at something moving on the streets. The RPG soldier hit his buddy firing the MG, yelling something Chifuyu couldn't understand. The soldiers turned the gun around, facing the stairwell. His buddy reloaded the gun, and waited. The other two got behind columns, waiting as well. Chifuyu heard footsteps, and what sounded to be someone speaking in serbian. The soldiers readied their weapons, and Chifuyu watched as two figures appeared from the stairwell.

Chifuyu didn't get a good look at them as they were literally ripped to shreds by assault rifle and MG fire. But under the Iraqis, and behind them, the floor blew upwards, and a soldier in an exosuit, which gave the wearer a wrist-mounted minigun on the left arm, appeared from the smoke, and started firing. The machine gunner was destroyed by the bullets, by the RPG soldier was able to fire a rocket off at the exosuit soldier, destroying him. The two lowered their weapons. They looked down at their comrade, kneeling down to him. Chifuyu watched, but her heightened sense of hearing picked up footsteps coming up the stairwell. She turned back, and saw one more figure walk up the stairs, the soldier was smaller than the other three, but wore the same armor. His rifle shook in his hands, and his face looked young. Chifuyu looked closely at the soldier, trying to figure out why he looked so familiar. Then she saw the turquoise eyes.

The soldier standing in front of the two Iraqi soldiers, clad in Hammond grunt armor, was Gio Inferno.

Chifuyu suddenly put two and two together, and understood what was going on. She looked out into the city, and she realized why it seemed so familiar to her. She was flown out to this city after the fighting in it had ceased as part of a celebrity group to help the younger ones affected by the war. She remembered seeing a Hammond soldier guarding the entrance, his face void of emotion and his eyes dull and broken.

And the eyes were turquoise as well.

This was the Third Battle of Fallujah, the city was the last place the Middle Eastern Alliance had assaulted, which was one year before the war ended, and two years ago. Gio was 17 when he entered the ISA, meaning he was 14 or 15 when this battle had happened.

But Gio was here, standing in front of two Iraqi soldiers who were kneeling to their fallen comrade. His eyes were full of fear, his rifle shaking, and he seemed to be quietly crying.

Chifuyu wondered if Gio would just run downstairs and back out into the streets. But instead, he did what no 15 year old should have to do. He gave a defiant cry, and pulled the trigger on his rifle. The automatic rifle ripped through the Iraqi soldiers, killing them. Gio kept firing, not even firing at anything. He emptied his mag, and stopped shouting. His rifle dropped from his hands, and Gio fell to his knees. The numbers 614 was seen clearly on the back of his armor. Chifuyu looked the other three corpses, and saw the same numbers on them. She just watched what was probably Gio squad die, and Chifuyu knew what that meant as someone who had worked with the military. She moved towards Gio, but her vision was distorted. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. She closed her eyes, and opened them to a new vision.

She saw Gio, who looked to be maybe 10 years old, still on his knees, but he was in front of a laboratory. The building looked to just have been under attack, and Chifuyu got closer to the young version of one of her pupils. When she was directly behind him, she gasped.

On either side of Gio were corpses, one to the left and one to the right of him. The corpses looked like older versions of Gio, both in a masculine and feminine forms. Chifuyu couldn't fathom what he was going through. She could get close, her parents left her and Ichika, but leaving by choice left anger in a child, leaving by death left pain.

The visions suddenly became rapid. She could barely keep up with them.

A soldier on her knees, and a shotgun disintegrating her head to her shoulders.

Two teens running in an open field.

A pilot integrating into an IS mech for the first time.

A cadet being beaten up on a parade ground.

This was what Chifuyu saw, and when they ended, she woke up in the real world. She stood up, and rushed to the window looking out into the arena.

She saw Ichika dragging Cecilia away from her destroyed IS, which was taken apart and had many burnt and dented areas on it. She saw Houki relaying orders from where Maya should have been, and Maya fighting Gio in her Raphael Revive IS. Gio's IS had been changed since she last saw it. The IS was taller, around 21 feet tall instead of the usually 18 feet it was. It was now black instead of grey, had a Trebuchet on each shoulder, a flaming broadsword, which Gio was using right now, and an XO-16 Chaingun strapped to his back. Chifuyu watched as Gio battered Maya, who wasn't even close to denting Gio, according to the screen. And apparently, Gio's defense specs had changed as well. His rechargable shield was now 7,000 instead of 5,000, but the regular shield had dropped to 12,000 instead of 22,000. The IS wasn't even named Firestorm anymore.

Chifuyu stared at the name, and something inside her mind presented her with a memory.

The Last Chapter shall hold the Gods in his own hands, and only with the closure of his past will he ascend to a new plane of power unseen in this world, causing the being to be unmatched for an eternity.

Those were the last words she remember her mother saying to her, and by looking at this name, she found the one she was talking about.

For the IS's name…

...was Canto 34.

Review and Favorite, PM any questions.