... Ugh.
That about summarizes how I am feeling going into this chapter. There's a lot to cover and my notes (which are less composed than could be hoped for, to my present regret) are all over the place for this battle, meaning I have to make some semblance of a good mixture of events coming in from all over the place while playing out the largest battle to date. We have Jeremiah's struggle against Gino, Lelouch's massive assault on Pendragon, five Knights of the Round dodging all over the place throughout (including Luciano, excluding Gino; the other five will be present in Pendragon, hence the exclusion of Gino), and a whole mess of plot development coming from ballpark random directions all the while. Phew. This is going to be a rough three chapters (two if I decide to merge the next two parts, on account of Part Two lacking substance – I probably won't need to, though, unless what I do have planned out ends up being less than I expect it to be), so sit back and enjoy. Well, enjoy if it's good. If it turns out as terrible as it very well could, feel free to throw the nearest projectile at me in retaliation.
And welcome back, monkeykixass! It's been a while since I've heard from you – at least a couple chapters, I think, but that just may be poor memory on my part. And insightful as always, you are, for actually asking the questions I expected people would ask. I'm trying to characterize Jeremiah more as a go-between model of what he was like in both season one and R2, his dedication to his work and his dedication to Lelouch more or less molding him into a very dedicated, but otherwise rigid man as opposed to the bag of moderate comic relief and mediocrity that he was in R2 – not that I disliked him, because I actually very much like Jeremiah, hence why he has kept such an important place in this story. And in Rolo's case, while I won't confirm whether or not there is any underlying malicious intent there, I will point out that I have not given any real reason for their to be a need for manipulation – he's not Lelouch's false brother in this fic, instead taking on the role of simply a faithful ally (with underlying reference to past torment at V.V.'s hands). But with Lelouch, especially with his increasingly steep descent into darkness, who knows? Except me, of course.
Some Knight of the Round he was, Gino thought in dismal resignation. They were supposed to be the best of the best, the soldiers who could do what could be expected of no other. They could change the tide of battle with relative ease and take out any foe placed before them. They were beyond the regular chain of command, beyond things so pioneer as military order. They were one-man armies in their own right, with free license to do as they pleased. And despite the foolishness in allowing such loose cannons to act freely on the battlefield, they got away with it because they were so faithful, so adamantly dedicated to the orders given to them by the Emperor himself. Their presence could thus be seen as the equivalent of the Emperor himself lending his aid to his armies.
So why was he suddenly feeling so weak? He was an ace in the Britannian military, having mastered piloting just about any aircraft by the age of fifteen, and likewise mastered Knightmare Frames just last year, at sixteen. He boasted prodigal talent for anything that could move through the air and his custom Vincent, outfitted with a unique design of float system that more closely resembled a jet's wings and a unique cockpit style similar to that of an aircraft, was no exception. The United States forces below him should have been a suspiciously small gathering of mice waiting to be picked off by him, the theoretical bird of prey for that particular scenario, and he should have already led his forces to victory and been celebrating with the various Generals and Lieutenants of their massive army, with frivolities that typically followed a monumental Britannian victory. And then, tomorrow he would be taking the fight to the United States, attacking their base along the Californian coast whether His Majesty authorized it or not.
Instead, he was forced to fend off two Akatsukis at once, holding his ground only because of his raw, superior skill. The difference in the specs of their Knightmare Frames was nearly nonexistent – the Akatsuki was, evidently, a mass-production Knightmare Frame largely deriving itself from the Vincent despite clearly being the successor to that strange Japanese Knightmare Frame, the Gekka – and so it came down to an odd match of their skill, where Gino's talents were offset by the fact that he was facing two foes at once. Just when he thought he might land a solid blow on one of them, the other opened fire at his feet from the double barreled gun mounted on it's left wrist, and he was forced to pull back before his MVS could make contact in order to save himself. That one managed to put some distance and brought up it's right arm while it's comrade continued to fire at him with it's hand gun, firing from the massive barreled cannon on it's right wrist. The shot missed, albeit narrowly, and instead made contact with the broad wall of the hangar behind him. The hangar's wall was immediately torn down, the interior catching fire and inevitably destroying what Knightmare Frames they still had stored within. What a pitiful waste, is something the old Emperor would say. But whether it was of his own inherent compassion or the effect his new charge had on him, Gino felt real sadness for that materialistic loss and the lives lost at the same time.
It had only been an hour since the battle had begun, but already the situation was proving to be far more dire than Gino had initially anticipated. Sutherland and Gloucester were falling like flies all around him, overwhelmed entirely by the strength of Jeremiah's forces. Counterattacks were made using sheer numbers as their source of strength, and even then they were hard pressed to score a single victory over the enemy. Jeremiah had seized control of their barracks with help from his ground forces, which Gino belatedly realized he should have taken measures against even with the unlikelihood of infantry being used in a battle so heavily reliant on Knightmare Frames., and had turned the run down building into a base of operations of sorts on the base itself. From there everything had begun to go downhill for them, Gino acknowledged, and their forces were struggling simply for the purpose of not losing more ground than they already had. Shamefully enough, they needed reinforcements, in spite of so vastly outnumbering the enemy.
Gino activated the MSV shields on his legs – yet another feature specifically given to his Vincent, in spite of the inability to do so with the mass-production variant of the Knightmare Frame, for which he was endlessly grateful – and charged, pulling out one of his MVS while he made for the other Akatsuki, which was still preparing to fire from it's massive arm cannon again. He reached it before that became a problem, and the cannon was instantly detached from it's arm in favor of a chain spear, resulting in a clash between the two. Gino smirked and fired the slash harken on his right hip, sending it upward so that it impaled through the Frame's chest and through the cockpit. Even though the Knightmare Frame was still in relatively good condition, save perhaps for a gaping hole in it's chest, the punctured cockpit left the Frame without a pilot, and it slumped motionlessly to the side. He pulled back quickly as the other Frame's barrage of fire began where his feet had been seconds before, and without full power in the shields on his Frame's calfs – or so said the blinking '78 percent' on the screen to his left, which might as well have meant, "It's your funeral, buddy." - being in one place for more than a second and a half was probably not a good idea. Not one bit.
Why, why, why did they have to be so strong? The old days were far more simple, when their side was the only one with any remotely advancing technology in Knightmare Frames. With India's help both China and Japan had been close behind, with the Euro Universe close behind them in turn, but up until India's rapidly made improvements on the Gekka to make the Akatsuki, Britannia had still had the edge. Granted that edge had meant little when their troops were falling into pitfalls or being decimated by one great tactic or another, but they'd still had the edge on a technological level. But now... Gino groaned as he continued to try, unsuccessfully, to close the wide distance between him and his sole remaining foe. He could easily use his float system, but that would insinuate that he needed an unfair advantage to overcome his foes. And while he could admit that the embarrassingly difficult fight was growing tiresome, he was not so desperate as to need such an advantage.
His embarrassingly difficult quest to take out the last of his assailants was inevitably halted when his factsphere sensors acted of their own accord, warning him of an approaching signal from behind – very swiftly, at that. He turned around just in time to throw up both of his MVS in defense against an identical attack from two MVS swords. The shimmering silver of Jeremiah's Edinburgh nearly blinded Gino with it's brilliance, the sun reflecting off of it's entire body brightly, so brightly that Gino had to grab his military issued viser and throw it over his eyes to keep the glow from disturbing him. Jeremiah backed off from him instantly, putting further distance between them by way of a well aimed kick straight into the chest of Gino's Vincent, resulting in a rather nauseous sort of vibration to shake him as his landspinners rolled backwards from the force. He quickly adjusted himself to remain in place, but by then it was a repeat of the last scenario – he had to throw up his arm quickly, else he would have been cleaved open.
Gino's sensors unnecessarily warned him of the presence of his former foe, but before he could do anything about it, several Sutherland were speeding in to remedy the situation. One instantly fell to the firepower released from the Akatsuki's arm gun, and as the other three approached they found their sorely outmatched selves forced into a rather strange three-on-one duel using their batons and, in the case of their lone foe, the chain spear. Assured that he had his back covered, Gino pushed at Jeremiah with everything he had, forcing both of them to frequently shift their landspinner equipped feet so as to keep their footing. With a bit more effort they were in a death race of sorts, Gino speeding across the paved ground while Jeremiah backpedaled at a pace to match, neither weakening the force their clashed weapons produced as they grinded – loudly – against one another. Gino shot his leg out to trip and Jeremiah accordingly pulled his leg away, and when Jeremiah shot out his free hand to land a blow, Gino grabbed it almost effortlessly.
He was thrown for a loop, however, as the pressure on his sword was suddenly removed and he summarily fell forward. Jeremiah took that chance and struck, cleaving the float system off of his back with precise accuracy. The second swing was caught by his own MVS and the death race began anew, minus his float system, which actually afforded him the opportunity to put better focus on a great many other things that he hadn't had the power to do anything about before. His damaged MSV shields were repaired almost instantly and the traction in his feet was restored, both of which gave him enough of an edge to even out the playing field. He shoved his leg forward while activating the MSV shield that guarded it, slamming the shield into the Edinburgh's leg and forcing the entire Frame to fall slightly as it continued to backpedal, pieces of metal flying out from where their two legs were connected.
As they disentangled from one another Jeremiah fell slightly to the side, his now-damaged right leg fighting to keep up with the rest of him. Before Gino could make act on his newfound advantage, obvious warnings - "Incoming!", "Warning!", and the like – told him to move to the side, which he did just as the Akatsuki previously thought indisposed slid by, it's chain spear poised to strike. "This is getting ridiculous!" Gino spat without mirth. Had people been able to see him in this bemused state of focus, they'd know that his trademark – and possibly biologically caused – mirth for just about any situation had died a sudden and unceremonious death. He charged at his new – old? - foe and slashed at him feebly with his MVS, but all that served to do was result in another deadlock that caused a not so pleasant screech of metal where the arm connected to the rest of his Frame's body. Uh-oh?
"Uh-oh," Gino echoed his thoughts as the Akatsuki moved aside to make room for Jeremiah, sporting a slightly – very – damaged leg but otherwise still in perfect condition. His MVS slammed against Gino's still raised one, and as that same screech rang out again, his arm detached itself from the rest of the Frame's body, and Jeremiah pulled back before they sloppily collided with one another. The controls that typically made the left arm move suddenly ceased to function, unsurprisingly, and Gino grumbled out his frustration while putting the whole of his focus on moving the only arm still operable – operable, Gino noted, meaning attached.
Jeremiah took no pause in attacking again, distracted only by the momentary annoyance of Gino throwing out his leg in a repeated tripping attempt that had about the same level of success as it had before. He threw up whatever shields may have helped – the only on his right wrist, and the one on his chest – and drew his other MVS before blocking Jeremiah's attack, grunting at the straining effort it put on him. "You're stronger than I thought, Knight," Jeremiah called in a mocking tone, though it was anything but that in reality. "But you're facing Jeremiah Gottwald! For the success of Master Lelouch, I will not fall here!"
Since the pretend-that-their-opponent-didn't-know-who-they-were act seemed to sit just fine with Jeremiah, Gino decided to play along for the sake of a lighter undertone to their brutal, savage and otherwise mood-dampening battle – light undertones were always a good thing in the supposedly bright and sunny world of Gino Weinberg, even if the sun in the sky fell at the same time for him as it did for everybody else. "I will not let Britannia fall! You guys can take whatever you want from the rest of the world, but so long as the Knights of the Round remain, Britannia will not fall!"
"Bold words for a decoy," Jeremiah quipped, knocking Gino's MVS aside before going in with his left arm – the one that Gino had no arm with which to respond. He quickly moved to the side, dodging the attack, before activating the MSV shield on his arm to block the swing from the right that immediately followed. He closed the narrow distance between them and brought up his right arm, slamming the needle blazer on his elbow toward Jeremiah. He quickly moved to the side, but the shoulder joint of his right arm was still caught by the needle blazer and, seconds later, blown from the rest of the body with electric force.
"A strong decoy!" Gino heartilly quipped in return, before the last word of that quip registered to him – and with that, the fact that he'd been called a decoy in the first place. "A decoy?" he asked stupidly, as the two of them began the awkward battle of fighting with only one arm, thankfully on opposite sides of their respective Frames, which meant being saved from the even more awkward possibility of their arms being on the same side, thus resulting in them each attacking the gap where there was no arm. That would be embarrassing.
"While you are here, fighting the great Jeremiah Gottwald, Pendragon will fall!" Jeremiah exclaimed, firing off a slash harken from his hip. Gino matched it with one of his own, tangling the two together and joining them at the hip – heh. Gino wanted to laugh at the unintended humor there, but he promptly remembered that the man who's hip he was joined to was not a long time friend, and that the hip he was joined to was not a man's at all, but in fact the hip of a Knightmare Frame very capable of killing him. They both dropped their MVS swords and clashed fists, first together and then at various parts of the other's Frame, like old friends in a childish fistfight. Gino made a note that associating a fight to the death with a childhood fistfight between friends was rather depressing.
Realizing his thought process was going in a rather comically wrong direction, Gino focused instead on working himself free from their bind and processing the fact that Jeremiah had just said that Pendragon was going to fall. That wasn't possible, right? Water separating Lelouch from them, no way of reaching Pendragon without getting through either him or their Atlantic Fleet, and all that. "Impossible," he thusly replied, ignoring the fact that impossible probably shouldn't be used to describe the endeavors of the man who had conquered two thirds of the world in less than a year.
"Contingency plans using the Geass, several months ago," Jeremiah explained, careful to leave the mostly unknown detail of Lelouch no longer having the Geass out of the explanation. "Pendragon will be destroyed, and what is left of it will fall to Master Lelouch."
Gino's thoughts become muddled as they begin a new round of assaulting, exchanging blows while keeping one another within arm's length – the slash harkens tying them together make sure of that. Gino casts away thoughts of His Majesty's ill fate as impossibilities, attempts made only to confuse and to distract. There was no way that even Lelouch could so easily reach Pendragon, Gino was sure. Lelouch would have to come through California, and while Gino was not sure that was a good thing either – an army of forty Knightmare Frames holding their own against so many meant that Lelouch evening the playing field could mean their immediate defeat – it was preferable to an impossible surprise attack on Pendragon.
o---o
It was an expected eventuality, if only because it had happened in past generations, that the throne room would be made into a makeshift war room the moment danger arose. While Pendragon had never suffered from worse than a meager terrorist assault during the reign of the 57th Emperor, the plans made in the event of an assault on the capital had not changed, and were thus employed in the same manner when the massive forces of the Anti-Britannian Front threatened their homes with powerful Knightmare Frames and the destruction of their underground tunnels. This left Odysseus facing his ultimate judgment; being made the unofficial Commander-in-Chief, replacing the actual Commander-in-Chief, Ricardo Emland, in his duties.
The problem was, Odysseus had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He knew a thing or two from when Schneizel would offer for him to join him in battle and from when he would occasionally play overseer of an operation, but his knowledge ran no farther than that. Unlike Lelouch, Schneizel and Clovis, Odysseus had never been a master of chess. He had never held an interest in tactics or anything of the sort. Up until his unofficial rise to the throne, he had held no real aspirations. The throne was his birthright rather than something he deserved, and he had honestly always thought he would be denied his birthright in favor of somebody more worthy of it.
"Our first line of defense has asserted their position to stop the enemy, and we are preparing to defend the line around the governmental offices on the border of St. Darwin Street," the actual Commander-in-Chief said informatively, directing Odysseus' attention to a red line on their map of the city that they'd laid out across the table now occupying the middle of the massive room. Below it was a blue line, and right in front of it was a black arrow acting as representation of the Anti-Britannian Front, who had rather unceremoniously taken control of the civilian districts and were trying to breach the line stopping them from entering the now lowered portion of the city, resting upon destroyed, leveled plates. Already, their army was struggling to hold the lines they had established, and none too few had resigned when the call to arms for previously sleeping soldiers had been made. Contrary to popular belief, the remaining men in their army clearly weren't the bravest of the brave.
"They have better weapons, and a larger army!" the man across from him, Major General Ronald Ashford – of no relation to the Ashford family who had backed Lady Marianne up until her death, Odysseus added – said. He was quite possibly the youngest man there, younger even than their middle-aged Emperor, and was hardly older than thirty years of age. He had richly colored brown hair so dark it could pass for black, and the beginnings of a beard on his chin, not rough and unkempt but rather carefully cared for. "And their leader is a boy who's exploits make any sane man spit in the face of any who would call the young foolish. I can count on one hand the number of men who could do what he has done, and none of them live still! How are we supposed to face such a man?"
"Are you suggesting we surrender?" Ricardo boomed, slamming his hands down on the table. His very long and very grey hair swung from side to side with the effort of the motion. "Britannia has led this world as it's strongest superpower since the days of my namesake! We cannot consider surrendering to the discarded progeny of our great empire! I don't care that he is the son of that consort Marianne, or that he has wit that surpasses the White Prince! He is our waste, discarded because he was weak! Whether or not that is still the case is irrelevant; we cannot bend our knee to him, or any other!"
The man next to Ricardo nodded, waves of curled blond hair bobbing back and forth as his head swung down and then back up. The Grand General and Head Admiral of the Atlantic Fleet, Elbert Kingman, rested nearly a head shorter than the Commander-in-Chief which, despite having reached his full height a good two decades ago, was fitting of the age difference between them. "He is right, Your Majesty. We have not bent our knee to another since The Humiliation of Edinburgh, and it would be degrading to begin doing so now. We may be weaker and fewer in number, but if we can hold out until the Knight of Three can return, we have a chance."
"If he comes at all," Guinevere noted. She had one hand placed on the table, her index finger running along it's edge and over her brother's hands on it's quest to the corner of the table, where it began a return trip. Her left arm was wrapped securely around Odysseus' waist, stilling the violent shaking that would otherwise be visible to the entire room. He did not want to be there one bit, and Guinevere couldn't help feeling a bit of contempt for those assembled for making him remain present. He had never taken a life, directly or indirectly, and the thought of having to order people to do so was making him ill. Guinevere was faring much better with her iron will, but she hadn't ever taken a life either, and she doubted she'd be any better suited for the task than her brother. She was suited for an easy life of luxury and aiding her brother – and caring for that worthless man she bitterly referred to as her husband – not for commanding and plotting. The closest thing she'd done to plotting was conspiring against her mother when she and Odysseus had found her to be the adulterer she was. Which, in hindsight, she'd had every right to be when her husband's many consorts were considered.
Ah, those were good times, Guinevere thought reminiscently. Even then it was just her and Odysseus, providing each other the comfort and companionship nobody else dared to give them. They'd been model siblings in a way, looking out for one another in a way that most parents longed to see in their children. Their parents hadn't cared, of course, but that was probably why they were that way in the first place. They were friends, siblings, parental figures and lovers all at once, giving one another the affection and care they didn't get from anybody else. Now that she thought about it, Nunnally and Lelouch had been like their children; they both looked up to their eldest siblings greatly, and back then Lelouch had adored Odysseus nearly as much as Schneizel and Clovis.
Odysseus had been everything to her back then, and that hadn't really changed. When she was a lovesick teenager, they had shared their first kiss with one another – experimentally, they had assured one another at the time. They had outings with one another that, had it been anybody else, would probably have been dates. When she had been married off politically their relationship had reverted back to it's strictly sibling-like state – by twenty, she'd rationalized that there had been nothing sibling-like about their relationship – and they had simply looked out for one another, careful to keep that bit of distance between them that they realized should have been there all along. And yet she had always felt from then on like they hadn't been close enough, and she had never really been satisfied with the way their relationship had been since. With age she'd come to ignore it, but recent developments – namely, the excuse to openly ignore her husband in favor of her brother – had caused such thoughts to resurface.
"What do you mean?" Elbert asked warily, as though fearing the answer. At the stage they were at, facing the collapse of the entire empire, he probably did.
"Lelouch thought this out well," Guinevere said with a mocking show of admiration. "Jeremiah Gottwald is assaulting our forces in California so fiercely that even if they do prevail, they'll be so battered that they will hardly be of any help here. And then we have to consider the possibility of them not making at all." She tightened her grip on her brother's waist when she felt his shaking grow just a bit stronger at her admission, for which she shot her a grateful smile. "We can hope for the extra help, but it isn't something to hold out on."
"Our forces cannot hold out forever, and many were lost when the tunnels were collapsed," Ricardo stated, rubbing at his stubble covered chin. "And our air forces, while not lacking, have all but been demolished by that damned Gawain. Why we gave the White Prince the opportunity to have that thing made is beyond me."
"Regardless," Odysseus quickly cut in, deterring the discussion away from a pointless topic, "what do we do?" Beneath her hand, Guinevere could feel trailing drops of sweat running down her brother's back and began idly stroking it comfortingly. He was obviously growing more and more nervous by being so out of his element.
"Hope the Knights of the Round can hold them off?" Edward tried, a stretch even by his own imagination. Asking that much of five soldiers, even if they were five of the best Britannia had, was unreasonable.
"We will need to rely heavily upon the aid they can provide," Ricardo agreed – sort of. He ran a hand across his forehead, trying as best he could to keep perspiration from being evident. Guinevere's eyes swept over him fleetingly, deciding in an instant that he'd failed horribly. His military uniform clung far too tightly to him for it to be normal, and there were noticeable dark patches of sweat growing from beneath his arms. Not to mention his hair looked more than a little slick, and not in a manner that was the least bit attractive. Yeah, he looked like an absolute joy to be within smelling range of. "Only the Vincent can match their Knightmare Frames, and without a mass-production variant we have to rely on them. That or use overwhelming numbers, but that option is hardly available. Not to mention that Camelot's damned Hadron technology makes using such force virtually pointless – a well aimed shot and we'd lose the majority of them, anyway."
"And what of the Lancelot? And that red one, for that matter?" Ronald demanded, his voice shaking just a little. Quite the brave General they had there, Guinevere quipped to herself. She thought better of making that thought known. "The Vincent is based off of the Lancelot, and Kururugi could probably match the Knight of One! Did you see his performance rating when Lloyd tested him? Ninety-four percent! We haven't seen ratings that high since Her Majesty Marianne in the Ganymede! Even Lord Waldstein only got an eighty-nine for the Vincent, and he was the best we had! Ignoring his unfortunate loss, how are we supposed to match Kururugi and another who, by all accounts, could very well be his equal as a pilot! They are invincible with skill like that!"
"Stop!" Odysseus cried. The force with which his body wanted to shake caused Guinevere herself to shake while trying to keep a strong, comforting hold on her brother. If anybody noticed, they wisely ignored it. "We cannot surrender to pure force, but fighting will not get us anywhere either. Is that the general opinion?" Nods from all of the important military officials present followed, and Odysseus felt something like a judge giving his final verdict on judgment day. "Then the solution is simple: fight, flee, do whatever you feel is best. I will stand strong and wait for Lelouch, as I am sure he will come here to settle things at some point. Whether you want to go out there and command your men to fight bravely or if you want to return home to your family, nobody in this room shall be permitted to judge you. The choice is all your's."
"With all due respect, Your Majesty," Guinevere took the brief pause in Ricardo's speech to assure herself that nothing respectful was following, "that simply cannot be. We either fight or we flee. Your word alone will not spare anyone the humiliation of deserting at such a crutial moment, whether there is to be a suicidal battle or not."
"I will not condemn any of you to a possible death," Odysseus stated as calmly as he could manage – despite this, Guinevere could noticeably feel sweat now pouring down his back. "Nor will I state that you must run away. I understand what you are saying, Commander, but it is not a decision I can comfortably make. Think me weak if you wish to, but I never claimed to be the good war maker my brothers are."
Ricardo opened his mouth with the obvious attempt to rebuke His Majesty's foolish behaviour but a quick glare from Guinevere, as it had to so many others, rendered him silent on the matter immediately. "V-very well, Your Majesty. I will fight, however. Permission to take command of the main line at St, Darwin's?"
"Of course," Odysseus replied hastily. "This rank is your's, Commander, not mine. I trust you to return safely, however."
Guinevere didn't think it would be a good idea to point out that Ricardo's performance rating was the same as Kururugi's – if the numbers were to be flipped, that is. While he was a celebrated commander that fought toe to toe with Japan's General Todo during the Second Pacific War, his fighting capabilities once placed inside the cockpit of a Knightmare Frame were less than spectacular. The odds of him returning from the cockpit of a Knightmare Frame was slim at best, disregarding the possibility of him facing one of the United States' two aces. Instead, she managed a smile as feral as she'd ever managed, and eyed each of the assembled officials in turn. "Will any of you be opposing His Majesty's decision, then? Or will you accept his good faith and choose your own fate?"
Of them all, only Ricardo, Edward and a handful others decided to stay. Odysseus' judgment day-like order seemed all too fitting at that point.
o---o
Feeling her head pulse with a faint, familiar headache, Anya Alstreim pulled up the arm of her cockpit chair to her right, pulling out a small bottle of pills and an accompanying bottle of water. After shoving three of the tiny pills down her throat she sagged in her seat, letting the growing relief in her head consume her briefly. Monica continued to ramble on about a self-righteous need to fight for the future of the Britannian Empire but Anya, aloof and detached, cared nothing for what she had to say. All that mattered was her own thoughts, her own reasons for fighting. Reasons her diagnosed amnesia wouldn't allow her to remember, but they were there all the same.
"We are the Knights of the Round!" Monica cried, and faintly Luciano could be heard chuckling derisively at the remark. Anya couldn't really fault him for finding the self-glorifying spiel amusing, though she herself failed to find the same amusement in the statement. "Will we be the ones to roll over and let the work of His Majesty Ricardo Von Britannia be torn apart by a large group of terrorists? That's what these men are; army or not, union of nations or otherwise, Lelouch Vi Britannia and his allies are terrorists and wanted people within the Britannian community! They are the ones who resulted in the death of His Highness Prince Clovis," she had the decency to pause in her idealistic babble while Luciano laughed uproariously at that, "and they took from us the Knight of One! Not again! Not again will they take from us what we hold dear! If all we have is this dilapidated city, let us defend it to the death! All hail Britannia!"
Normally, when somebody so forcefully paid respect to their nation with those words, the end result would be a resounding cry of other people echoing that person's bold cry. So it was sort of embarrassing – for Monica, but Anya could feel the embarrassment with a palpable disgust – when nobody rose to the occasion of answering her call. Unlike Monica, who believed in striving for victory to the bitter end, they were far more logical. They knew that this battle was Britannia's final hour, and the goal was not to fight to win, but rather to join the Knight of One in a glorious death. Terrorists as their enemies or not, this battle would be their finest, and their last. Anya herself didn't see the merit in dying so meaninglessly, but she didn't care enough to go against it. What was the point of fighting it, anyway?
"You guys do whatever you like," Luciano sighed, though his voice still had a sadistic lift to it that chilled Anya's core. "I've got a score to settle with the Black Prince. Charles went and told me he didn't take too kindly to me during our last meeting at Mt. Fuji."
"W-wait!" Monica cried, breaking her holier-than-thou silence all too quickly. "You're charging out there? Shouldn't we stick together?" The idea sounded so stupid, not even Monica could make it convincing. Anya would have laughed if she'd had the heart to do so.
"Woman," Luciano growled, "what's your most important thing?"
"That's..." Monica stuttered, coming to a blank when she tried to answer that question. Anya finally managed a smile, small and mocking, while she checked the performance rating on the Hadron cannon Camelot had so kindly outfitted the chest of her Vincent with. It was a little erratic and it couldn't be controlled like the Gawain's could – Lloyd had been annoyed to no end with his inability to match that destructive breakthrough – but it served it's purpose; to destroy things. Unsurprisingly it slowed her Knightmare Frame down dramatically while it was charging, but that suited her style more anyway. Slow and destructive; let those guys who thought speed was the one thing that made a Knightmare Frame a grand success do what they wished.
"Life!" Luciano declared gleefully. "If I take that from this kid, they'll fall apart!" As though that explained everything that demanded explaining, Luciano dropped his landspinners and tore across the cracked, paved road briefly before taking off into the brightly lit sky, heading straight for the tall, imposing figure of the Gawain in the distant sky. The two cone-shaped pieces on it's shoulders opened and it's Hadron cannons fired, making the sky shine brighter still with a long line of explosions in front of it, followed by a couple smoking and swiftly descending aircrafts heading for the ground. An aircraft that was just barely visible high up continued on it's course toward the Gawain, only to be caught by the slash harken in it's left thumb. A lone explosion made itself known in the sky before the distant figure of Luciano's Vincent clashed with the Gawain, slowly drawing both of them further and further away from the battle.
A tense silence followed, broken moments later when Monica began chuckling very nervously. "W-well..." she murmured, a strained smile in her voice. "Attack?" she added tentatively, but the inflexion at the end made it sound like a question. Anya disregarded it though, having already spotted the Lancelot very distantly, cutting through Sutherland from within the midst of dilapidated buildings and crushed stone. The black secondary color was especially visible with the way that the white of the Knightmare Frame glowed.
"Traitor," Anya murmured casually, tearing off across the ground. She activated her float system whenever something that might have endangered her journey appeared before her, soaring over it before landing on the ground again. It really should have been night though; the sight of the destroyed scenery in broad daylight left a sort of ill, unfamiliar feeling in the pit of her stomach. And that Lancelot, the traitor who had turned on Britannia so fickle and memory-reliant as friendship, was the right hand of the man who had so carelessly killed so many. War was full of sacrifice, and Anya could embrace that as readily as anyone else. But the sort of destruction they caused simply to satisfy themselves was terrible, and it was unforgivable.
"Die," Anya growled, an unfamiliar anger bubbling in her heart as she slowed to a stop, firing the Hadron cannon in her chest. The stream was erratic, waving about, but it hit it's desired mark, destroying the three Akatsuki just in front of the Lancelot. This drew her target's attention, and they drew their MVS swords just before clashing together. It was obvious who was stronger, but the Lancelot had a hidden strength inside of it that had it keeping up with her anyway.
"A Knight of the Round, huh?" Suzaku called heatedly, backing off and kicking Anya to the side. She recovered quickly and fired her Hadron cannon again, but gritted her teeth when she got nothing but a few short bursts of energy flying in random directions. "And an incomplete Hadron cannon? Britannia really has fallen!"
"Shut up, traitor," Anya sighed, easily maneuvering herself to dodge when Suzaku closed the distance and swung again, responding with a swing of her right arm that caught him in the side, sending him sprawling into an already partially crushed building, forcing the rest to collapse around him. "Traitors must be taken out."
"This world needs a future!" The rubble shattered and flew in all directions, revealing a slightly tattered Lancelot with it's VARIS rifle held outward, smoldering at the barrel from having just fired. "Britannia is living in the past!"
"And what sort of future do you have?" Anya challenged, dodging when Suzaku fired again. He closed the distance between them and dropped toward the ground, holding himself on his hands as his legs rocketed toward the cannon on her Frame's chest. She quickly moved to the side, ducking when he followed through with a kick to the side. As his leg tried to pull back, she grabbed it and flipped him overhead, smashing him into the ground on her other side. "I have no past. Your future is one that will never satisfy me, terrorist."
Suzaku sprung to his feet, fist slamming into the side of Anya's Frame and knocking her aside. As she collided with the wall behind her, it broke and she fell back into the dusting rubble. "A future that satisfies everybody is too idealistic," Suzaku murmured. "We need a future that can lead us to a world that satisfies everybody!"
"And what about you?" Anya murmured, pulling herself out of the rubble with more effort than it should have taken. "Will your future satisfy you?"
Suzaku was in front of her by the time she had righted herself, and it took all of her coordination to block before one of his MVS swords cleaved across her chest. He wasn't the least bit deterred though, and Anya found herself fighting to keep swing after swing from two MVS swords at bay. Her efforts became fruitless when she was again pressed into a wall, although this time she managed to fire a slash harken and launch herself up onto the wall as he attacked. She swiftly sprung down, knocking into him as he steered away. His kick that followed succeeded in slamming her through the wall, and it was only through very careful movements that she managed to land with her landspinners righting themselves, keeping her upright.
Suzaku was close behind, flying through the opening made when she'd been sent through the wall, both MVS swords ready for another duel. Anya swiftly pulled out her own and met him, yelping in surprise when the force of him attacking while still hovering lightly in the air sent her reeling across the ground. The wheels of her landspinners finally caught a bit of lifted pavement and she flew back, but with quick reflexes she activated her own float system, protecting her from a possibly dangerous landing. The two retreated into the air, swords clashing constantly. Suzaku had an advantage in the MSV shields on his wrists, but as Anya ducked under a sword swing, she swiftly brought out her elbow and slammed her needle blazer into the small buckler on the Lancelot's left wrist, destroying one of it's shields. In turn Suzaku stabbed one of his MVS swords through the open barrel of the Hadron cannon protruding from her Frame's chest, removing his sword but also neutralizing the erratically threatening weapon. A well aimed kick to the sword in her chest sent her flying toward the ground, with Suzaku in hot pursuit.
Both suddenly went still as a massive explosion behind Suzaku sent debris flying through the air in all directions. As the smoky dust settled, the Guren flew out from the midst of a massive circle of wreckage, holding the charred and severed head of Monica's Vincent. It didn't take a genius to figure out that one of the Knights of the Round had already died in the midst of their desperate struggle – though it was ironic that their first casualty was the only one who didn't see this as anything more than a valiant fight for their country. The Guren immediately turned toward them when they were spotted below it, but before Suzaku's reinforcements could arrive they were tackled aside by Nonette's Vincent, a bright purple and sporting two slightly longer variations of the MVS swords in it's attached backpack, beneath it's float system wings. Karen quickly turned in the air and kicked Nonette away, but that left her ultimately indisposed for the moment.
Seeing Karen already a bit battered from her fight with Monica and subsequently struggling, Suzaku turned and prepared to take off into the air again. Anya quickly took hold of his left leg and spun him in the air, launching him into the wall to their left, one of the four wings on his float system breaking off as he made contact. A loud grunt reached Anya's ears as he crashed into the ground, sending some of the paint and even more of the metallic coating on the Frame's body flying to either side of it. He recovered quickly, though, launching upward and kicking away from the rubble surrounding him, heading straight for Anya. She briefly saw the devil in the Knightmare Frame moving toward her, with it's coal black lines and the blood red of it's eyes. She barely managed to move to the side before the devilish Knightmare Frame soared by, sword swinging.
Anya had never felt so exhilerated in a battle before. Emotional detachment had always been something present in every aspect of her life, but at that moment, she couldn't help the tight lipped smile on her face as she swung her leg out at Suzaku, who narrowly avoided it by lifting his leg and activating the MSV shield there. Her blood raced and she longed to take out her oppnent, not just for being a traitor but also because he'd been such a fair and worthy fight. Such things were seldom found for a Knight of the Round, and Anya wanted to feel every bit of satisfaction there was to be felt in such a fight.
Even if she would inevitably forget it eventually.
o---o
MVS swords clashed brutally, Jeremiah's left arm struggling against the force with which Gino's right arm swung. His brow was drenched with sweat from the intensity of their fight, but he still had enough awareness to realize that the battle around them was starting to calm down. Either the momentum carried by his vastly outnumbered forces had finally run out, or their momentum had spearheaded them through the Britannian forces with shocking determination. At this point, Jeremiah was surprised to admit that both were possible. His men weren't the blatant casualties he had thought them to be, though they were still pawns in a much bigger game.
In the midst of battle Gino had managed to recover his other MVS, putting them together into their MVS spear form, locking together at the hilt. The weapon proved exceptionally more poweful than a single MVS, and keeping up with it's power was an effort of it's own. It didn't help that Gino was probably the better pilot, and that their Knightmare Frames were relatively even in strength. Jeremiah felt himself growing increasingly exhausted with the desperate fight they'd been waging for what had felt like several hours, though Jeremiah wasn't sure how long it had actually been. His muscles were aching from the strain being placed on them, and the need to retreat and find a warm bed somewhere to climb into was mounting on his determined subconscious.
That determined subconscious promptly pulled out a steel mallet and smashed the mounting exhaustion over the head, reminding him of his need to make sure Master Lelouch had enough time to make his plans a success. Contrary to what Master Lelouch had said regarding the importance of Jeremiah's life, he was relatively sure that his own life was relatively meaningless if it was lost making sure Master Lelouch conquered Britannia. But if he could live, and possibly even take a Knight of the Round captive... Well, that was a best case scenario, at any rate. Jeremiah knew what hoping for best case scenarios did to a hopeful man's psych, and he hadn't particularly enjoyed being in contact with such people. Scary ones, they were.
He manoeuvred ducks and weaves, desperately avoiding the erratic, voulge-like twirling of the MVS lance. When he could, he blocked with his MVS, but the result sent him smashing through the iron wall of another building on the base, smashing through two parked vehicles before he fell to his knees, digging his one hand into the ground to halt himself. Gino followed close and fired a slash harken, but Jeremiah swung his MVS sword in the way and let the weapon wind itself around the blade. Once it had, Jeremiah harshly drew Gino to him before launching a slash harken upward, narrowly missing the cockpit attached to the Vincent's back as it tore through the Frame's chest.
This didn't so much as phase the Knight's resolve, and if it did it wasn't noticeable to Jeremiah. Gino kicked away from him, breaking free of his own slash harken binding from the force. His MVS spear came in swinging a moment later, and with great effort Jeremiah managed to block the attack with his sword. Again the force sent him reeling, but briefly bringing his landspinners up afforded him enough traction to prevent another unfortunate mishap. But he misjudged exactly how long the MVS spear was if Gino were to put it's entire length into the equation, and Jeremiah wasn't fast enough to avoid the spear tearing open his Frame's chest, leaving a bit of his cockpit open for the Knight to see. He could feel air whipping at his face now, which was a sensation he was unfamiliar with while piloting a Knightmare Frame.
But after being cramped in the increasingly heated confines of that cockpit for so long, it felt immensely refreshing. That was until they clashed again, houwever, with the violent force of their attacks sending powerful blasts of wind at his face, like invisible knives cutting at his cheeks. He winced every few seconds as their weapons drew back and clashed again, as though trying to beat the other pointlessly into submission. Finally, when his face felt as though it had been cut to shreds by a particularly sadistic torturer – one that took pleasure in seeing his face as bloodied as it could possibly be without him actually dying, Jeremiah was sure, in spite of the fact that his face wasn't bleeding at all – he pulled away and grabbed for a rifle, opening fire on Gino to create some much needed distance between them. The necessity to keep moving didn't help his numbed face at all.
"It's funny," Gino called out, his voice deathly serious and completely unlike the humorous boy Jeremiah had thought himself to be fighting up until that moment. "Lelouch has so many powerful people at his side, and how many of them betrayed Britannia for his sake?"
Jeremiah ignored the traitorous quip and kept firing, but this bold plan of his was quickly running out of bullets and he didn't have much time to think of a new tactic. Boldly, he tossed his rifle aside and charged, pulling out his MVS as he went. Gino thrust his MVS spear at him, but Jeremiah quickly swerved out of the way. Before Gino could move Jeremiah caught him in the stomach of the Knightmare Frame with a slash harken, holding him at length as he closed in. "I fight for my own convictions! The progeny of Lady Marianne shall always be my master!" Gino was utterly helpless as Jeremiah closed the remaining distance between them, piercing his chest with another slash harken while with his sword he cut off the top of the Frame's cockpit, revealing the grim faced Gino Weinberg.
"What good are convictions if you had to sacrifice what you held dear?" Gino called back. In spite of now being fully visible, Gino managed to pull his MVS spear back enough to make it at least somewhat threatening. Before it could make good on that threat, though, Jeremiah knocked it aside with his sword. The poor way with which Gino had been forced to hold it made keeping his hold on it impossible, and the weapon flew from his Frame's one hand and embedded itself into the ground nearby. Jeremiah followed with a swing to the joint connecting the Vincent's sole remaining arm to the main body, detaching it and leaving it to drop lifelessly to the ground at their feet.
"My loyalty has always been with Lady Marianne!" Jeremiah cried, keeping a firm hold on the now helpless Knightmare Frame, left with only it's slash harkens and needle blazers as weapons. "When she was murdered in cold blood, it was her memory I served! To follow her son to hell is the only way I may serve her now."
"Would Her Majesty have wanted you to betray Britannia?" Gino cried back. The Vincent wiggled a bit in the firm grasp Jeremiah now had on it, but otherwise Gino remained perfectly calm. There was still a deep scowl on his face, however, remaining as a reminder of the stark contrast in his usually jolly demeanor. "Was betraying Britannia something that would have pleased her?"
"Lady Marianne loved her children," Jeremiah shot back obstinately. He stood in his seat, making sure that the firm hold he maintained on Gino's Vincent would hold, and proceeded to climb out of the hold made in his Frame's chest. With careful coordination he ran along the length of the wire between his Frame's hip and where the slash harken was embedded in the Vincent's chest, leaping off and onto the shoulder when he ran out of wire to run along. Fumbling momentarily, he grabbed the standard handgun holstered at his side before climbing over the shoulder, running down to the cleaved open cockpit where Gino was only just beginning to catch wind of what was happening. Skilled pilot he may have been, but it appeared to Jeremiah that he lacked the necessary paranoia of a good soldier. Before Gino could finish fumbling about himself, Jeremiah was looming over the cockpit, his handgun trained with a clean shot at Gino's face.
Gino raised an eyebrow as if to dare Jeremiah to take the shot, in spite of his slightly quivering body and slightly fearful eyes. Jeremiah simply shook his head, flipping the gun in his hand once before firing a large red button amidst the controls in front of Gino, destroying the Vincent's cockpit ejection. "You're more useful to Master Lelouch alive," he said by way of explanation. "A Knight of the Round lives to serve the royal family, right? Live, and dedicate that life to Master Lelouch."
"The traitorous Black Prince?" Gino spat. The quivering in his body intensified, but whether it was increasing fear or anger that caused it, Jeremiah wasn't sure. "No! A Knight of the Round serves Britannia to the death!"
"Non-negotiable," Jeremiah chided, directing with a tilt of his head to the broken ejection button in front of Gino. "Come back with me as Master Lelouch's loyal knight, or as my prisoner. Your choice."
o---o
"Is this how the Knights of the Round fight?" Karen cried. The Knightmare Frame directly in front of her made sure she was never far away, always keeping her within range of the long MVS swords the bright purple Vincent boasted. It didn't help that another, blood red Vincent was just behind it, complicating matters with a rifle in either hand, both firing in annoying – relatively nonthreatening, but annoying – tandem. She hadn't gotten so much as a shot off since the blood red Vincent had joined the fray, the pilot announcing herself as Dorothea Ernst; a powerful Knight of the Round, but then again they all were. And that distinction certainly hadn't mattered a whole lot in defeating the Knight of Twelve.
"Big words for a terrorist!" Nonette – the one with the lengthened MVS swords had identified herself as such – called back. With an effort Karen blocked a sword swing by using her Fukushahado wave as a shield, but before she could counter she was forced to move aside as a hail of bullets flew in her direction. She continued to move with the bullets by staying just barely ahead of Dorothea's turning, but the tactic was complicated by her being interrupted, again, by her other foe. She quickly grabbed her optional, short bladed fork knife and blocked one of the swords with it, grasping the other sword with her claw, melting the glowing metal of the MVS immediately with a brief surge of radiation energy.
"And how is Britannia any better than terrorists?" Karen shouted. She brought her claw in front of her chest and emitted another defensive field of radiation energy when a hail of bullets again descended upon her, and then swiftly moved to the side as Nonette capitalized and struck at her again. "Conquering, oppressing, destroying... Britannia faces terrorism because your actions satisfy only yourselves!"
"Britannia has changed!" Dorothea interjected disapprovingly. "Words like that don't justify terrorism."
Karen laughed derisively, forcing Nonette aside as rage got the better of her. She tackled into Dorothea's Vincent, stabbing her fork knife deep into the factsphere sensor on her left shoulder. "Britannia has changed? You think that solves anything? Did you do anything when Japan became Area 11, when the Japanese were turned into Elevens? What about when you conquered Area 18? Did the tragedies of those beneath you mean anything?"
She removed the fork knife with purpose, putting some distance between them. She quickly moved when Nonette came at her from behind, and while Nonette had her back turn Karen fired a wave of radiation energy from her claw hand, destroying the float system backpack attached to the Vincent's back, sending her in a sharp decline toward the ground. Dorothea hastened after her fellow Knight to stop in her sharp fall, but Karen cut her off on the way, another wave of radiation already pulsing from her outstretched claw in a hazy circle. "This isn't terrorism. What we do – what the Order of the Black Knights set out to do – is not as simple as terrorism. It is justice, for what you have so callously done to us. Tell me; do you look down on Elevens? Do you believe the Japanese to be weaker than you? Even now, when your two greatest enemies – superior enemies – are Japanese?"
Dorothea offered no answer as she tossed aside one of her rifles and replaced it with an MVS sword, The two clashed sword on knife, and Karen lowered her claw and allowed the radiation surging from it to fade as they danced around one another. Faintly a loud crashing from below alerted Karen to Nonette's landing, but there was no telling whether she was alive or what shape she was in, both her and her Vincent. It seemed to distract Dorothea briefly, however, and Karen took the moment presented to quickly grasp the Vincent's head between the skeletal fingers of her claw hand. Before she could prematurely end the fight, Dorothea surprised her by breaking free of her grasp and backing off. Karen circled her warilly, looking for either an opening or a sign of what Dorothea was planning to do. Either would have been lovely at that moment, and far better than feeling like a stalked animal.
Finally Dorothea pounced, dropping her other rifle in favor of her second MVS sword. She fought with a style all too familiar from samurai movies and the like, but entirely too foreign in Knightmare Frame combat. She kept herself facing away from Karen, advancing as though taking sidesteps and swinging her swords all the while. One would come down and as it would come down the other would go down, following a rotation that kept her virtually untouchable. She turned flawlessly with every move Karen made, and before long that deathtrap of a swinging motion was almost within striking distance. When Karen tried to counter with her fork knife, Dorothea quickly changed stance so that she was facing forward, swords crossed at her chest to block with ease. The pitiful length of her weapon by comparison to the MVS swords didn't help matters for Karen, either.
The familiar sound of many things exploding high above didn't even bother Karen, but the Gawain's Hadron cannons laying waste to another horde of aircrafts was enough to give Dorothea another brief pause. Karen rushed at Dorothea, clamping down hard on her head with her claw hand. "This is not terrorism. What we are doing is not wrong. Lelouch may be wrong, but his ideals weren't. This world needed to change, and we were the ones to do it. You call us terrorists, people who spread violence and care nothing for who they hurt, right? Is that not what Britannia does?"
"Did!" Dorothea shouted back, with a little warble to her voice that betrayed the cool exterior she had put on in the face of being melted like Monica before her.
Karen growled and leaned forward in her motorbike-style seat, pushing forward the lever in her left hand and releasing a small bit of radiation energy, just enough to make Dorothea cry out in pain and surprise. "Stop being so virtuous! A few weeks with a good man leading you does not erase the sins you have committed! Britannia must answer for what it has done! Or will you disregard the people you have killed, the people who have been reduced to slaves because of your disgusting ideals! And what of my brother, who died fighting the disgusting likes of you?!" When all her outburst got in reply was a self-satisfied – and very pained – chuckle, Karen snapped. She leaned as far forward as her body could comfortably go, pushing the lever every bit she could. The blood red Vincent clutched in her hand began bubbling from the heat and the power of the radiation consuming it, but she stopped just before it could destroy the Frame. And whether it was because she couldn't or was simply too prideful to, Dorothea made no move to eject. Or maybe she had lost consciousness. That was possible too, if not probable considering the amount of heat she had just pumped into the Vincent.
A sharp, palpable tingle ran up Karen's spine for a moment. She glanced around in fervent search of the origin of that feeling – she often felt the same thing when people mentioned the Geass, whether they were using it or not – and immediately spotted the approaching figure of the golden Vincent piloted by Rolo. He dodged her claw hand and cut through the immobilized Vincent she was holding, but his assault appeared to have no effect until that tingle had left Karen's body, when suddenly the Vincent dropped from her grasp and exploded. Rolo came to a halt in front of her, one arm at his side holding an MVS sword while the other pointed his second MVS sword at her.
"What were you doing?" Rolo asked accusingly. His voice was slightly labored from having just used his Geass, as well as from the additional strain of excluding Karen from the active field, but he had managed to get the contact back into his eye before it became a problem.
"Fighting?" Karen replied questioningly, wondering why she felt so unnerved by Rolo's accusatory statement. She didn't need to fear somebody just because they had a Geass, after all; that would be just stupid.
"Lelouch is counting on us to take out the enemy," Rolo said with a scowl – or at least, Karen figured he'd be wearing one at that moment. "Your self-satisfying worries can be dealt with later. We take out the enemy and we move on. We do not take the time to taunt them or to toy with their lives."
The haughty, holier-than-thou attitude with which Rolo spoke made Karen grit her teeth in unsuppressed rage. She knew that if he wanted, Rolo could easily stop time and make short work of her, but she didn't bother to care. Not only was he baselessly insulting her, but he was doing it while defending Lelouch, and that was just perturbing in her eyes. Karen knew that people displeased with Lelouch were few and far between, but did he really have people who still truly believed in him, in spite of how much he had changed?
Instead Karen scoffed, deciding it best that she take the casually dismissive, but otherwise antagonizing angle. "I don't need to listen to you. People who have no reason to fight don't mean anything on a battlefield."
"No reason to fight?" Rolo uttered disbelievingly. And then Karen's entire world faded into nonexistence, only to come back into focus moments later, with her fork knife removed from her hand and the needle blazer on the elbow of the Vincent's right arm was pressing against her chest threateningly. "Is that something you should say, when all I have done is loyally followed Lelouch? The same cannot be said of you, after all."
"You..." Karen growled, flexing and unflexing her fingers in preparation of either an incoming attack or her attacking.
"If you betray Lelouch, I will kill you. I promise," Rolo said with a mocking, boy-like innocence. And then her world stood still again, only to come back into focus with Rolo gone.
o---o
Not ten miles out from Pendragon in the direction of California was the Hogosha, resting on a small strip of paved land that looked as though it may once have been an airport, although there were no buildings accompanying it to support that thought. The plan had been that, on the off chance that their forces were victorious at Sacramento and along the Sacramento river – only Lelouch and Jeremiah knew that there was virtually no hope of that being the case; everybody else believed Lelouch had handed off some devastating plan to Jeremiah to ensure victory despite his pitiful army – they were to continue on their way toward Pendragon and regroup with the forces still with the Hogosha. For Lelouch and Jeremiah, the Hogosha's positioning doubled as a contingency plan; an ambush for the returning Britannian army if the Knight of Three were to win at Sacramento.
The troops on duty aboard the large air battleship were not the 'cream of the crop' – Schneizel would have used such strange wording, Kanon thought with a fond smile – or so could be inferred of the casually talking guards outside his prison cell. They were consumed in a rather droll discussion of whether or not the coming fall lineup was going to be suitable for their children – there were a number of things wrong with such a strange topic, but Kanon kept those thoughts to himself – and also wondering if they would be alive to be moderators of that. Kanon was tempted to say that they were basically the gruntman, the ones with no faces that were picked off without remorse because they weren't important enough to have a face of their own, and that they had roles so pointless that the odds of them dying were slim to none, but he again kept that to himself. There was no sense in lying outright to them, after all.
"Do you really think Sara should be watching that?" one of the guards – the one to the left of his cell, previously dubbed Guard A for the sake of minimal confusion on Kanon's part – asked. "She's only eight! And Ellie would absolutely kill me if she found out..." he scratched the back of his neck nervously, probably thinking of scenarios involving 'Ellie' murdering him in one brutal way or another on account of bad parenting.
"You know kids these days," the other guard, named Guard B for the sake of convenience, stated. "They do whatever they want no matter what you tell them. We weren't that rebellious when we were kids, were we?"
Guard A chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his neck a second time. "I wouldn't be standing here if I had been. Or do you not remember my old man?"
"Ah, Rick was a great guy..." Guard B laughed, to the obviously apparent chagrin of his friend. "When you were on his good side, anyway. Wicked sense of humor, he had. Scared the crap out of me a number of times, though – he was great at playing serious." He broke into a brief moment of laughter, this time joined by his friend. When they sobered a moment later, he added, "Remember that time I ---"
"--- Convinced him I was in league with Refrain dealers? He almost killed me after that!"
"No," Guard B laughed, "but that was funny too. I was thinking of the time I came over, and he threatened to shoot me for stepping foot on your property. Took a good five minutes before I saw that grin break out across his face – I thought I was a goner for sure!"
"Ah, yeah, those were good days..." his voice trailed off, not into soft laughter as one might expect, but rather into a sort of dubious and somewhat suspecting growl. His eyes bore straight ahead, toward the end of the hallway, and Kanon knew it was time. He smiled widely as the guard took several steps forward, easing his hand away from it's casual hold on the handle of the handgun at his side, gripping his rifle with both hands. "What are you doing here? Shift change isn't for another three hours."
"All Hail Lord Schneizel," the newcomer spoke in monotone, seconds before the sound of a gun firing was heard, followed promptly by Guard A crumpling to the ground, blood beginning to pool beneath his faceplanted body. Guard B stepped forward in some valiant, if foolish, attempt to avenge his friend, but he too fell in a pool of his own blood seconds later. The dim, flickering lights of the hallway beyond Kanon's cell revealed a man dressed in the same Order of the Black Knights regalia the two now-dead guards were wearing, but instead of being rather animated in facial expressions like the two guards, his mouth was set in a straight, blank line.
"Sergeant Wellesley," Kanon said in greeting, reaching through the bars to shake the man's hand. "I imagine it was hard keeping your cover for so long. I am sorry my poor leadership got you captured in Congo, but it seems everything worked out, am I right?"
"Events of late have been unfortunate, but I am glad that my misfortune assisted you in the end, Sir," Wellesley replied stiffly. He moved away from the cell and crouched down by one of the guards, fiddling with his pants until he found a set of keys. He observed them at length before taking one between his thumb and index finger and unlocking the cell. He pulled the door open and bowed respectfully as Kanon strode past before pushing the door closed and dropping the keys on the corpse he had stolen them from. "I trust we have an escape plan?" Wellesley stated, but with just enough emotion for it to be called hopeful.
"No," Kanon said firmly, a smirk coming to his lips. "We have a hijacking plan to carry out. Many of Lelouch's inner circle are disillusioned with him; if we play on that, we have a shot."
Their voices carried through the halls as they continued to walk before eventually reaching the ears of a very nosy and very excited Diethard Ried. He could admit without shame that he was growing bored of this whole fiasco over Lelouch – Zero had been interesting, an enigma that stood out in the world; Lelouch did nothing but follow the world's trend, albeit more successfully – and had been on his way to meet with Kanon, but instinct forced him to duck into the nearest room when the voices of the traitorous soldier and Kanon reached his ears. He smirked as he took in the entirety of their talk, and when they were no longer present he ducked out of the room, already fumbling with his pocket for his cell phone. He would have to tell Lord Lelouch of this matter; if he did, there would be just a bit of excitement left in Lelouch's ventures. Of that he was certain.
Phew! Part One is done! Odysseus was fun to write in this chapter – as I was writing the war council scene, I had this vision of him as the mayor from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, giving his final opinion on whether or not to run from the falling moon (sorry to anybody interested in the series that has not played that game, for that minuscule and generally insignificant spoiler). That scene sort of molded itself around that idea, with the doomsday feel to it and all. If you've ever played the game in question, you can probably see what I mean.
On another note, I tried my hand at a bit of humor with Gino, if you noticed. With the scene from his perspective, it just wouldn't have felt right otherwise. The way I saw it, even a more serious Gino would have the occasionally witty or humorous remark to make. I made sure it was toned down, but it was still there to lighten the mood.
While we're at it, let's discuss Anya. I took an AU liberty and made her amnesia a diagnosed thing, rather than a product of the Geass (collateral damage to my change in the Geass plot from canon, and because she wasn't Marianne's vessel here). Other than that, I rather think I failed horribly at characterizing her, but I tried to make her a unique character and tried to shy away from the archtype canon molded her from a little bit.
Also, one more thing to apologize for is the quality of the fight scenes in this chapter. While I don't think the fights themselves were too bad (I tried to keep battles between the Guren and Lancelot at the forefront of my mind while writing them), the fact that every noteworthy fight in this battle involved a Vincent, and things were very tedious I imagine. Not to mention that I think I did a rather bad job of conveying how strong the Knights of the Round are, particularly when two of them were killed by Karen with relative ease, but there was just so much fighting that some of it had to be glossed over. And unfortunately, Monica and Dorothea were unfortunate victims of this. I am sorry to say that this will continue into next chapter, with the conclusion of the Suzaku vs. Anya battle as well as the Lelouch/C.C. vs. Luciano battle, but that's it. And next chapter also includes much of the backdrop for the fight's conclusion – you'll see what I mean, as by the end of next chapter things will be completely different.
Finally, I feel the need to point out that this story is nearing it's one year anniversary. While it is not quite there yet, I may not have another chapter out before then (it's entirely possible, but contingency plans are nice anyway), so I'll say it now: Happy one year anniversary! I recognize that I don't have much of my original fans lying around (or at least, the original fans that reviewed – no offense intended, I just seldom make an effort to keep track of Alerts and the like), but all of my fans are appreciated for their support, comments and feedback all the same. It certainly doesn't feel like I've been trucking this thing along for eleven months, and I certainly didn't expect to have made this much headway in a year's time. I expected, in planning, that this would be a far more lengthy project than it turned out to be, honestly. And it has been a rocky path, because I was improving as I went (I encourage the particularly dedicated amongst you to backtrack and see just how vast the difference is from beginning to end; I was certainly surprised, and seeing how utterly terrible some of my chapters have been was rather amusing) and because I'm not perfect and some things just didn't come out as well as they could have, but that's okay. This will be something to look back at once I've gotten even better, because this story was where writing started in earnest for me.
