Lelouch was gaping at Suzaku with the recent development. "A… Knightmare Frame? They'd allow that?"

Suzaku nodded his head. "Apparently. They want me to report to the front line immediately."

Lelouch shook his head. "Well, I suppose we'll be opposing each other then."

Suzaku suddenly looked up, a fire in his eyes. "No. I can't help them after this." He gestured to the several of the thousands of dead Elevens lying in the street. "I won't fight for a nation that will readily kill scores of people just for their personal gain. I'll pilot this 'Lancelot', but it won't help them do anything. I won't help them win their war."

Lelouch gazed at his friend. Suzaku was loyal to a fault, and never gave up on something. He was incapable on recognizing a lost cause, but in seven years he had matured, learned to see the world. A small smile quirked on the raven-haired boy's lips. "Well, in that case I think we can work something out."

Suzaku was confused. "Work something out?"

"I'm going to be guiding the terrorists. You're going to be fighting them."

"Didn't I just mention that I wouldn't be fighting?" Suzaku sighed.

"Change of plans," Lelouch said with the sort of air that meant he was most definitely planning something. "You're going to prove yourself to them, and gain their trust. No doubt if you perform well today, they'll want to use you again."

Suzaku opened his mouth to protest, but Lelouch cut him off. "Don't worry, I'll be fighting back. I'm going to take command of the terrorist cell that's been causing all of this trouble, hopefully be able to gain a victory of sorts. If my aiding the terrorists lasts longer than this one day, which I do believe it will, I'd like you to remain with the Britannians and aide me as well. Things become infinetely easier if there's a man on the inside."

"You mean… work as a double agent?"

Lelouch nodded. "Precisely. The Britannians would be at a steep disadvantage with the opposing council having knowledge oftheir plans. Would you be willing to do this?"

Suzaku swallowed. It was now or never. "Yes."

Lelouch searched around the ground, and picked up an empty soup can, tearing off the wrapper. He scribbled something on it with a pen he pulled from his breast pocket and held it out to Suzaku.

"It's my phone number," he explained. "If we both make it out after this is done, call me."

Suzaku nodded and took the slip of paper. "Good luck, Lelouch." He said, and then ran off into the distance.

After the speck that was Suzaku's running form was no longer visible, Lelouch turned to C.C. "I have several questions for you, mostly pertaining to the past half hour. Obviously, there's not much time for that now."

She shot him a sideways glance. "Well, what are you going to do?"

He tore another piece of paper off of the soup can. After scribbling some information on it, he handed it to her. "This is my address. I live at Ashford Academy in the settlement. Go there, and stay until I come back."

A small smile crept onto her lips. "Usually, I don't like to comply to orders. You, however, intrigue me. I'll meet you there."

With that, she set off as well but with much less energy and virve than Suzaku had. She walked calmly through the decrepit and bloodstained ghetto with seemingly no qualms to the dead bodies strewn in the street.

Lelouch didn't wait to watch her go. Instead, he pulled out the Knightmare key and glanced at it briefly. After a moment, he put it back into his breast pocket and strode over to the Knightmare. "Well," he mused aloud. "This seems like as good of an occasion as ever to learn how to pilot a Knightmare frame."

Kallen Kozuki sat in the cockpit of her stolen Knightmare Frame, drinking from a bottle of water and resting her feet on the ceiling. She had finally found an alley to take a brief respite from the fighting and the Britannian Sutherlands. After piloting the Knightmare off the overpass and through the ghetto, she had been throwing off Sutherlands left and right, in the process losing her Knightmare's left arm. As she was relaxing, a voice crackled through her communication device, making her jump in the seat. "Kallen? Kallen, can you hear me?"

She reached down to the bottom of the cockpit with her hand, groping for the switch to turn on her microphone. Finally reaching it, Kallen pulled up her hand only to find a sticky grey substance coating the back. With a disgusted expression on her face, she wiped it off onto the wall of the interior. No matter how tough she may have been in combat, Kallen was still a person, and normally, most people don't generally enjoy foreign substances residing on their hands.

Finally, she spoke. "Ohgi? Is that you?"

"Yeah." His voice rattled through the speaker. "You made it out okay?"

She took another drink of water. "Mmmhmm. Lost an arm on the Glasglow, but it all came out fine."

"Nagata made it underground?"

"I think so," she replied. "Not really sure, though. We got split up on the overpass. I had this stupid overconfident Sutherland following me all through the ghetto, trying to blow me up."

"Wasn't one of ours, was it?"

She stared at the communicator, shaking her head at the stupidity of the question. God, she missed Naoto. "Well, Ohgi, we only have one Knightmare, which is a Glasglow. I'm currently in it, and anyways, who would be idiotic enough to try and kill me if we're working together?"

At the same they came to the same realization. "…Tamaki."

"I heard that! I'm not that stupid!" A tinny voice came through the speaker, sounding distant and detached.

"He has a thing for you, you know." Ohgi whispered after a pause.

"Shut up. He has a thing for every girl he sees that has hair on her head." Kallen replied.

"Well, shave your head then." He suggested innocently.

She snorted. "Fat chance."

Kaname Ohgi sat slumped against a building long since crumbled by the force of time and Britannian assault. He held his head in his hands, slowly shaking it back and forth. We've gotten into more than we can handle this time, he thought. Several feet away from him, his fellow resistance member and tentative friend Shinichiro Tamaki kneeled on the hard ground, holding a bazooka like gun in his hands on the ready just in case any Knightmares happened to pass.

"Man," Tamaki began, sounding much cockier than he should have, just like always. "I can't wait until one of those damn Britannians drives past us. I'm going to blast him into next week!"

I hardly believe that's possible, Tamaki, Ohgi voiced in his head. If one of those drives past us, we're dead.

The two remained quiet for some time, just the rustling of their fidgety movements and the distant sounds of gunfire breaking the silence. Ohgi still had his doubts about this mission, seeing as it was the first one that they'd had to pull off without Naoto guiding them. Kallen's older brother had laid out all of the plans, only to be found out and quietly executed by the Britannian military.

Kallen had insisted on joining their cell, making the choice between whether she would be allowed in not an option. Naoto had always been the one to hold her back, trying to protect his little sister from the real world. Still, Ohgi had had to face the facts, because the young half-Britannian girl was the best Knightmare pilot their resistance group had ever seen.

"DAMMIT!" Kallen's voice rattled through the speaker, startling Ohgi so much that he jumped in the dust and hit his head on an overhead rafter extending out of the building he was leaning against. Speaking of said half-Britannian girl…

Oghi scrambled for the radio and shoved his finger into the button. "Kallen?" he forcibly inquired, trying to keep calm.

"They found me. I've got to get on the move, but this stupid Glasglow…" He could hear her fist slamming against the control panel as if it would help the matter at all.

Inside the machine, Kallen angrily thumbed the track ball, rolling it as fast as it possibly would trying vigorously to get machine going. She flipped switches, pushed buttons, anything that may have helped get her out.

Just as she felt the Glasglow beginning to respond to her touch, she saw the first slash harken slice through the air. Her eyes widened as she saw that the military had equipped their Sutherlands with new models, which appeared to be much more aerodynamic and, "tricked out", per se. She spotted more than one gadget melded into the device, and wasn't in the mood to stay and figure out exactly what they did.

With a flick of her thumb, she propelled herself forward and through the alleyway, her landspinners squealing against the rough pavement and creating enough traction to get her going. She swerved through the ghetto, surprised and slightly alarmed at the lack of citizens she had to avoid. She had lived with Naoto in the Shinjuku ghetto half of her life, and knew the landscape better than she knew her thumb. Years of prowling the streets hiding from her stepmother's eye had made her not only streetwise, but also pretty adept at navigating as well.

When she had finally plowed through the populated section of the ghetto, hoping that she hadn't accidentally run over an innocent Japanese pedestrian, she plotted a route through the unpopulated ruins that may allow her to hide and cool down for a little bit. She could tell that the Britannian military was still pursuing her due to the rain of gunfire and the constant slash harkens pummeling the Glasglow. Thankfully, the one advantage that the Sutherlands had lost in their transfer to be used in Anti-Knightmare combat was that the old Glasglows were pretty much indestructible it you hit them straight on. Of course, they could only withstand so much damage as any machine could, but unless you hit a sweet spot in its armor or ripped it apart in close combat, it would take nothing short of a Sakuradite bomb to make it explode.

Expertly dodging bullets and buildings alike, Kallen made her way through the ruins with ease. She was in her element, but her state was rapidly declining. Even though the Glasglow was tougher, the Sutherlands were faster. Her home advantage wouldn't mean anything if the Sutherlands were going ten miles-per-hour faster than her.

After a particularly nerve wracking shudder from the machine, she heard a crackle over the intercom. Ohgi! She swore. I thought he would know better than to distract me in this kind of a situation.

Still, she responded with a snarled, "What?"

"Do you want to win?" A cool voice spoke.

She nearly stopped the Glasglow in its tracks, but recovered from her shock in a nanosecond. "Who the hell are you?"

"You may call me…" It paused. "Well, I don't think I can give that out just yet."

"Well, how in the world am I supposed to trust you?" She voiced while leaping the knightmare over part of a torn apart convenience store.

The voice chuckled. "Because right now, it's the only choice that you have."

Okay, I'm not going to add a big A/N here. Still though, I'm so happy that everyone likes this story, and I'm still getting e-mails pertaining to story alerts and favorites. Oh, and if you like my story, I would love it if you could tell me what you like about it. It let's me know what I'm doing right with this.

Also, I apologize that this isn't all too amazing. I've been working on this chapter for around six weeks now, and decided that enough was enough and I had to just put it up already. So, I apologize if this isn't very good because I was having so much trouble with it.

Thanks! R&R?

Critiques?