"Lelouch"- speaking
'Baka.'- thoughts
"Roger."- Radio/Walkie-Talkie
Euro Britannia Thought Elevator, London, June 23rd, 2018.
A Gardmare X stood across from a heavily modified Vincent Commander in front of a Thought Elevator. The pilots of each Knightmare were aware of the identity of the other one and both were waiting for something to happen.
Akito Hyuga, the pilot of the Gardmare X, shouted to the pilot of the Vincent Commander, "Well, aren't you going to start attacking, Julius Kingsley?"
Julius Kingsley, the pilot of the modified Vincent, replied, "Says the blind Eleven to the deaf Britannian."
Akito was sweating bullets as he was perfectly aware that Julius was taunting him. The Gardmare X's ejection system, unlike the standard Gardmares of the Euro Universe, literally jettisoned the pilot to safety if the Knightmare sustained enough damage instead of being a mere escape hatch in addition to possessing Slash Harkens on its shoulders. The Vincent Commander them moved forward and fired one of its Slash Harkens at the Gardmare X, which leapt to dodge the hook and proceed to destroy it with one of its own Harkens before opening fire with one of its autocannons. The Vincent Commander dodged to the left and shot at the Gardmare X with its assault rifle, but the bullets bounced off as a green energy shield enveloped the body of the Gardmare X for a few seconds before disappearing.
"It seems that you have good equipment. However, you also need to be a good pilot in order to defeat me." Julius remarked as he unsheathed a Maser Vibration Sword and tried to slice the Gardmare X in half only for the machine to dodge to the right and shoot at Julius, forcing him to leap to avoid the attack. Julius then fired a Slash Harken that was immediately dodged before doing a side slash that forced Akito to dodge.
Very suddenly, Julius received a transmission from someone and he then said to Akito, "We'll continue our battle at a later date." before leaving.
Meanwhile in Area Eleven, Tokyo had just erupted into a battlefield. Four hundred Gun-Ru frames and seventy-thousand Chinese foot soldiers were launching their attack from the west, not even caring that they were taking massive casualties as the defending Britannian forces fought street by street and led the invading foot troops into carefully planned kill zones.
"Targets are in sight, requesting artillery barrage now, Gamma Two!" a Britannian foot soldier entrenched at one of the kill zones transmitted.
"Roger that, beginning the barrage." Gamma Two replied before a rain of artillery fire completely destroyed over four hundred Chinese soldiers that were in the kill zone. Another four hundred soldiers clammered in guns blazing and they managed to kill a squadron of Honorary Britannians before another barrage killed them. At another kill zone, seven thousand Chinese had barely begun to push out of one of the ghettos when over half of their numbers were cut down by Gareths and well-entrenched Britannian soldiers supported by artillery.
"This is Knight Dan Roderick. We've repelled the first wave of enemy forces at kill zone C and sustained minimal casualties. How are the other kill zones faring, General?" a Gareth pilot transmitted to Andreas Darlton.
"Kill zone A just destroyed about eight hundred soldiers within two minutes and kill zone D has reported a similar situation. Kill zone E managed to halt a unit of thirty Gun-Rus from getting out and into the city, but they've taken heavy casualties and sixty percent of their cannons are destroyed! Ever since the invasion, all Britannian forces in Area Eleven have been called here to defend the Government Bureau and the city from attack. Knight, you and the others in your unit are to head to kill zone E and reinforce them before the next attack arrives! Darlton out!" Darlton replied from the only G-1 fortress that wasn't on the front lines.
Cornelia was relieved that she had managed to evacuate the civilians before the initial skirmishes that heralded the Battle of Tokyo began. The ghettos were completely deserted after all of the non-Honorary Britannian Elevens had left and while the ghettos around all of the other cities had been razed to the ground, the Honorary Britannians objected and obstructed work whenever the ghettos around the Tokyo Settlement were being threatened. Since the Chinese had yet to break through any of the kill zones, she had not needed to depart onto the battlefield herself. Even so, she remained in the Knightmare Hangar of the Administration Building in case enemy forces were able to steamroll over the kill zones.
The Britannian defenders at kill zone B knew that this was going to be a very long day as hundreds of Chinese troops began a third head-on assasult that would only lead to them all getting killed. One squad in particular was nervous as the last two attacks left at least fourteen hundred Chinese dead each while only about fifty Britannians died from both assaults combined. They had reason to be nervous too as they were running low on ammunition.
Once an artillery barrage came and flattened the Chinese, the squad commander transmitted, "This is Lambda Squad! We are running low on ammunition and requesting resupply at kill zone B!"
"We're en route, resupply will commence in five minutes." Britannian HQ replied.
"Bollocks, nothing takes five minutes! Another attack will be coming on our asses in less than thirty seconds!"
"This is HMS Avalon, requesting permission to establish overwatch on kill zone B." the Avalon's captain transmitted to Darlton.
"Permission granted. Deploy Knightmares if necessary, but do not allow the Chinese to break through under any circumstances! We've killed ten thousand soldiers so far and the Chinese aren't even starting yet!"
"Knight of Seven, you are to take off in your Gareth along with Luciano Bradley and reinforce kill zone B. Anya Alstreim, the Knight of Six, has her hands full with kill zone D along with the Knight of Three, Gino Weinberg." Schneizel said to a very aged and experienced warrior known as the 'Chryatis of Britannia' amongst military personnel.
"Understood, Prince Schneizel. Salthurion Chryasim will not fail." Salthurion said before heading to his Knightmare and getting inside it before launching to the kill zone. The Knight of Ten swiftly followed him and when they arrived, they mercilessly slaughtered the Chinese troops as they made a futile attempt to pin down two Knights of the Round. In the end, it took only four minutes for the attack to end with two thousand Chinese dead and during those minutes the soldiers guarding the only way into the city form the kill zone were able to replenish their ammunition and hunker down with more reinforcements.
Meanwhile, Anya in her Mordred and Gino in his Tristan had managed to not only rally the Britannian soldiers at kill zone D, but they were now leading those soldiers and their artillery support on a counteroffensive in an effort to halt the attack on the Tokyo Settlement. So far, they had managed to get into the ghettos and were simply put killing Chinese soldiers by the hundreds, fully aware that the Gun-Rus had yet to attack for the most part. That changed when the Mordred was fired upon as Anya destroyed a ruined building that a company of Chinese troops were using as a firebase. Anya had barely noticed since the Mordred was taking little damage, but she began to pay attention to them once Gino had destroyed three Gun-Rus only for five more to take their place.
Anya smirked as she used the Mordred's Hadron Cannons to systematically begin bombarding an incoming group of twenty thousand Chinese supported by their own artillery and ninety Gun-Rus, fifteen of which were within five seconds from her current position. Once she stopped, over half of the enemy soldiers were dead, ninety percent of their artilery was destroyed, and only ten Gun-Rus remained while the entire Ueno Ghetto had been completely flattened by the Hadron Cannon's destructive power. Gino and the rest of the Britannian soldiers moved on to clean up what was left as Anya headed to reinforce kill zone E, which was getting hammered pretty hard by the Chinese.
Ever since Tianzi had consolidated power, she had used it to push forth a law that left a maximum age of seventy-five for citizens in the Chinese Federation. Her aim was to reduce the population by no less than thirty percent and enforced the law with death squads, whose only purpose was to kill any citizen over the age of seventy-five. It had managed to cut the Federation's population by seventy-five percent and led to the deaths of numerous elderly people. Even though this would be pretty much a black mark on her reign, Tianzi believed that purging the elderly was necessary since with them dead, the population would finally be mostly consisting of the young and middle-aged.
A/N: While Tianzi does have good intentions for her nation, the fact that she ordered the automatic death of anyone over the age of seventy-five is very heartless and knows that she'll have to deal with the guilt of killing people. Also, the large number of Chinese deaths by artillery in this chapter is a reference to how artillery has become the number one killer in warfare. Even when the Knightmare frame was introduced during the Invasion of Japan, I am pretty sure that most of the losses taken by both the Japanese and Britannians were caused by artillery.