Code Geass: The Demon and the Dragon
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass. If I did, then what you see below would be the show, instead of a fanfiction on the Internet.
Stage 19: Revelation of Refrain
- The Brit -
James Picton was not a man to let insults go lightly, even imagined ones, such as the distinct lack of respect and honor from Draco. And, being a noble, he was especially obsessive-compulsive in tracking down the one who insulted him, in this case flipping rapidly though military and police channels, for any mention of the Black Knights, especially Zero and Draco.
"Knightpolice reporting Black Knight's Knightmare in-" James flipped past the report before rapidly switching back to that channel, catching the location.
"Alright Barry, we've got them." James informed his team-mate, the Arawn powering fully up and swinging the scythe around, as Picton ensured he had full range of motion and that the friction-reduction compound spread evenly over its joints. Next to it, Thompson's Hafgan drew one of the machine guns attached to either hip, checking the ammunition feed.
"Ready." Barry muttered, his face grim as status reports flickered over the Hafgan's screens before displaying a uniform green 'GO'.
The two Mabinogion frames accelerated out of their docks, past startled mechanics and out onto the dark streets of Tokyo, speeding towards a specific dock, with a specific warehouse.
- The Doomed -
Knightpolice Lieutenant Paptim 'Pappy' Messa couldn't believe his eyes, quite literally. The Frame formerly piloted by his partner Lieutenant Lyle Gable, the Frame that the Black Knight's Dragon had just hijacked, kept disappearing in a blur of colors, before reappearing out of thin air to smash into another of the Knightpolice Frames, his pilfered Frame's tonfas repeatedly bashing apart the targeted Knightpolice before disappearing again.
By the time Pappy made certain that he wasn't imagining it, a full half of the Knightpolice force was laying on the ground in pieces of broken and crushed Frame parts. Pappy and the remaining Frame were standing next to each other, standing before the phantom Frame.
"What the hell is this thing Lieutenant!?" The cadet in the other frame asked shakily, his Knightmare having lost an arm and gotten his Factsphere smashed in during the whole melee.
Ignoring the cadet, as well as the Black Knights firing on his frame from the second floor of the warehouse, Pappy drew a Knightmare knife from his Frame's hip, holding it towards the enemy Frame.
"Alright now...Draco, was it? Step out of the Knightpolice Frame slowly and......" Pappy trailed off when the Frame before him started contorting in ways no machine was designed to, blurring slightly in place. There was a buzzing, followed by the sound of crunching metal and Frame before the Frame's arms split in half, reforming into four smaller arms. And then spikes burst out from the forearms, ending in wicked talons that looked like they could do some damage.
Impossibly, the Frame's legs curled in on themselves, before their surfaces erupted into dozens of insectile legs and started scuttling the Frame over to the two Knightpolice Frames. The Knightpolice Frame's head worked itself apart, the Factsphere armor pieces changing into mandibles that would've fit a praying mantis while the Factsphere itself collapsed inward to form a gaping maw.
"Holy Motherfucking Shit!" The cadet screamed, abandoning dignity as he reversed his Frame and slammed cockpit first into the wall, smashing through with enough force to partially crumple his cockpit.
Pappy, on the other hand, held together.
This is impossible. He thought. And if it's impossible, it can't be happening, right? They've managed to inject some sort of hallucinogen or psychotropic into the air filtration system.....but then how is it affecting me, in my air-tight cockpit? The Lieutenant's somewhat panicky thoughts were interrupted by the sight of the ex-Knightmare's new mouth drooling a strange crimson liquid onto its body, the fluid oozing over its new carapace and onto the floor.
And he saw, in that drool.....
- The Dragon -
Learme grinned slightly when the Knightpolice began backing up, taking slow steps instead of foolishly dashing back like his comrade.
Of course, when the Knightpolice suddenly charged, he wasn't all that surprised either. Depending on the nature of the individual in question, certain stimuli could affect him differently than others. In this case, the Knightpolice Devicer reacted with aggression to frightening sights.
Nothing he hadn't already taken into account, as he tripped up the Knightpolice and smashed a tonfa down on the cockpit. Learme was simply surprised anyone of such character existed in the Knightpolice force. Well, used to exist.....
- The Queen -
The sight was...... Kallen checked her Factsphere and camera over to make sure she was actually seeing it.
In front of the Black Knights and Zero was a score or more of Japanese, all either stumbling around or sitting on the ground. They were all in various states of disorder, and generally looked ill and sickly. All of them were shouting or screaming out things from their past, ranging from dreams that never came true to successes far gone.
"Refrain." Kallen snarled.
"Not just Refrain." Zero said.
"What?"
"This wasn't just a PR mission Kallen. Draco picked up rumors of the main dealers starting to try and make some new drugs. Technically speaking, it is Refrain, only much more potent. This variant becomes addicting almost instantly, and detoxing from it without hospital assistance is deadly." Kallen shuddered at the thought. Refrain as it is was deadly. If this enhanced version got out onto the streets...
Then, one specific woman drew Kallen's attention, stumbling across the center of the room.
"Kallen, be careful!"
The scold and reprimand drew the attention of Zero and the Black Knights, to a woman stumbling across the room, her attention directed downward.....almost as though chasing a small child. It was her mother, dressed as though out for a walk in the city. Then she tripped, falling forward, and would have fallen flat on her face if not for Kallen's instinctive movement, sending the Burai-O's arm breezing past Zero and sending his cape fluttering in the brief wind, catching her mother in the Knightmare's hand.
For a moment, Kallen's mother laid on her stomach in the Burai-O's hand, before Kallen brought the other appendage around and slowly slipped her mother into it so that she was sitting, all the while raising her up into the air. As Kallen did this, her mother continued speaking.
"Now Naoto, you need to take better care of Kallen!" She said, scolding a now-imaginary young boy and causing Kallen to bit her lip a little.
"Pathetic....first you cling onto Britannia, then a man, and now a drug?" She scowled, just before her right shoulder shredded under fire, bullets streaking in from the wall of the warehouse.
The weakened wall groaned a bit, before a Knightmare shouldered through it, revealing a Hafgan. The angular, Sutherland/Lancelot-cross Knightmare's Factspheres extruded momentarily to take a good look at its opponent before closing, with the Hafgan retrieving a new machine gun to complement the one it already held in its right hand.
"Draco, we have a situation." Zero radioed, not bothering to switch from an open-channel.
- The Dragon -
"Yeah, I know." Learme radioed Lelouch back as he confronted the new squadron of Knightpolice. Unlike the relatively routine and unskilled ones Learme had dealt with just now, these ones had SWAT insignia on their shoulders, and had dual machine pistols and combat knives. There was also a small, relatively insignificant fact in that they were lead by an Arawn, which was particularly recognizable by the mono-edged scythe it was swinging around lazily.
"So we meet again...Drac- HEY!" Picton said, his Arawn's speakers perfectly casting out the sound of his voice to rebound off of the warehouse walls, as well as the quickly retreating backside of Learme's hijacked Knightpolice Frame.
"Damn it, everyone bail out." Learme snapped over the radio, now properly tuned to the Black Knight's encoded channels. "You too Second Platoon, we're using the Circe Contingency." Outside the warehouse, the sniper teams and Second Assault Platoon packed up and left their posts, retreating back towards predetermined rendezvous points without firing so much as a shot. The Circe Contingency was a fall-back plan that the two leaders had briefed their subordinates on, albeit not quite so well as said subordinates wished.
Lelouch and Learme however, were all too well-versed on the details.
"C.C."
"I heard." The witch replied.
- The Witch -
C.C sent the Io launching out from under the surface of the water, with the bone-white, Chobham-armored Knightmare landing on its feet. Almost as an afterthought, C.C had the frame swipe a good-sized length of steel girder, almost as long as the Io was tall, before sending another impulse to the Technorganic Electroactive Musculature, the supremely powerful system capable of sending the nineteen thousand kilogram frame into the air before crashing through the roof of the warehouse.
Despite herself, the witch almost smirked at the thought of the pilots in their Frames recoiling from the sudden appearance of the Io, with the first few seconds ranging through surprise, to shock, to rage, and finally to consternation as they felt that nagging recognition as they drank in the curiously familiar design of the Io.
C.C would know, having been surprised by how like and unlike the Io was to its predecessor, the Ganymede, when she'd seen it in the Ashford Industries hangers more than seven years ago.
Of course, this slight bit of imagination went right out the window with attached rocket booster when the Arawn screeched forth on its Landspinners, scythe raised to deliver a quick death-blow so Major Picton could continue his one-sided grudge with Learme.
At C.C's command, the Io accelerated forward on the Milspec Combat Tires integrated into its feet, the repurposed girder swiping at the haft of the scythe and sending the single-molecule edged death weapon flying to actually physically slice through the wall. The next attack was with the girder coming in low at the Arawn's feet, although the Mabinogion pilot was skillful enough to leap over the blow, going to the side for his scythe.
During this, the SWAT Knightpolice had drawn their machine pistols and opened fire, apparently not recognizing the fact that the Chobham-Laminate armor the Io sported was well-resistant, if not straight-out immune, to the High-Velocity Armor-Piercing rounds the Hafgan's weapons fired, much less the 15mm concave-tip Jacketed Hollow-Points the machine pistols spat out, each sparking off of the armor, rarely leaving a crack that could be seen - by an up-close inspection with a high-power microscope. The Io charged into them, girder smashing left and right, crushing the first Knighpolice's cockpit outright, while severe damage to the torso ensured that the other three's ejection systems wouldn't work without a fairly skilled mechanic team going over them first. The fifth one C.C assaulted ejected after his frame suffered a dismembering blow to the waist, the cockpit reaching barely a foot in the air before C.C had the Io swat it away with the end of the girder.
The sixth Frame drew both knives and rolled towards the Io, apparently thinking the knives, constructed specifically to deal with Glasgow-level armor, would do the trick. In a very unladylike manner, C.C raised the Io's left fist and smashed it down onto the Knightpolice's head, crushing the Factsphere and main cameras into the torso and pulverizing the internal structure, including the rocket motors, which leaked fuel into the Yggdrasil Drive. The mix of Liquid Sakuradite and gasoline-based fuel, highly dangerous at best, was ignited when the panicked SWAT officer attempted to activate the eject mechanism.
The Knightpolice frame simply exploded, in direct physical contact with the Io, sending up a large volume of red-black smoke before the flames reached the spare magazines for the machine pistols, setting off the gunpowder and sending rounds ricocheting everywhere.
The three survivors at this point visibly relaxed, their Knightpolices' hands and assorted weapons lowering as Picton finally wrenched his scythe out of the wall and rolled his Arawn back over to inspect the presumably-wrecked Nightmare of a Knightmare.
However, the smoke, which was growing somewhat thinner, dissipated or drifted away when the girder swiped through the cloud, revealing the Io, somewhat blackened and grayed-out by soot and carbon scoring.
Deciding to have a little fun with them before finishing them off, C.C rhythmically slapped the impromptu bat into the Io's other hand, all the while moving the prototype frame closer to the trio of Knightpolice. Who suddenly realized that Picton, for all his noble swagger, had left them behind.
When there was a bare two meters of space between them, C.C dashed the Io forward, girder raised to deliver the first of three death-blows.
- The Queen -
Still clutching her mother in the Burai-O's left, and only, hand, Kallen moved through the warehouse, avoiding the swarms of HVAP bullets the Hafgan's twin machine guns fired by virtue of the ECM-emitting horns and quick, skin-of-her-teeth maneuvers that quite often had a part of her Knightmare taking a chunk of material out of the wall, or crushing a Refrain-filled container.
Gritting her teeth, Kallen jerked the joystick controlling her Frame's remaining appendage, hoping to toss her mother somewhere in time for her to grab one of her daggers and deal with this nuisance of a Mabinogion. However, instead of tossing the woman into some obscure corner of the warehouse, with dubious chances of survival, her hand hesitated on the motion, instead flipping her mother onto her back in the Burai-O's hand.
"Damn it!" Kallen hissed. "Why can't I let go of you?" Distracted thusly, Kallen didn't react fast enough to the Hafgan's newest burst of bullets, the rounds chewing through either leg and sending the main body of the Black Knight's Frame crashing to the ground. The Burai-O's hand flew out, but Kallen's mother stayed right in it, up to the point when the Frame's momentum ceased and she tumbled out of the appendage.
Before the Burai-O's head, Ms. Kozuki righted herself on the ground, and gazed almost lovingly at the Frame. And despite knowing, intellectually, that her mother was just gazing into space, Kallen felt an emotional pull right then, that was compounded when:
"I'll always be there for you Kallen." At that moment, Kallen's world stopped, as she flicked through all her memories of her mother as a maid in the Stadtfeld household, always there, despite the abuse Kallen's stepmother heaped on her, along with Kallen herself.
A shadow presaged the reappearance of the Hafgan into Kallen's view, arrogantly stepping onto the Burai-O's torso, before levering a machine gun on her cockpit. Quickly, with reaction speed none of the Black Knights, even Draco, could match, Kallen had the Knightmare's hand grabbed at a sheathed dagger, before drawing the sharp-edged blade and slashing at the gun aimed at her cockpit, bisecting it just in front of the magazine feed.
At the same time, Draco, in his Knightpolice Frame, smashed in the elbow of the Hafgan's other arm before snatching the machine gun out of that hand. Before the Sixth-Gen Frame could react beyond turning towards the Black Knight's Tactical Commander, Draco spun his Frame, tripping the Hafgan with the Landspinners. Draco followed this with a strong kick to the side of the Hafgan, stepping the same foot onto it's midriff, and physically shoving the machine gun's barrel onto the chest.
A little-known and ironic fact of the Hafgan's weapon's development is that the HVAP ammunition was tested on a two-meter slab of the Hafgan's armor, with each bullet penetrating a full seventy-two centimeters into the material, from a range of ten meters. As such, the rounds rather easily penetrated the armor at point-blank range, carving through the Yggdrasil Drive and into the cockpit space when Draco pulled the trigger, firing until the bolt clacked empty.
With the Hafgan dispatched, Draco exited his Frame, jumping out of it's cockpit to land steadily on the floor before rushing over to Kallen.
"Hey, Kallen! Are you alright!" He shouted over the radio link, before stopping at the sight of the woman before the Burai-O.
"I'm so glad Kallen." She said, somewhat nonsensically, "You can be a Britannian now. You won't be bullied anymore. You can use the phone, and go on trips anytime you want!"
"Is she....." Draco trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards her.
In her cockpit, Kallen nodded to herself.
Later
Tokyo Settlement General Hospital
After the Black Knights had returned to the warehouse, and cleared it out of the addicted, Kallen had brought her mother to the hospital. After they'd found that she'd been affected by addiction to an experimental strain of Refrain, the staff had called the police. Of course, in her current condition, they couldn't jail her until she recovered, but they'd laid a sentance practically on the spot. Twenty years.
In the hospital, Kallen sat next to her mother's bed, dressed in her school uniform and mostly in the persona of Kallen Stadtfeld, while some pretty assistant stood next to her and droned about the side-effects of the drug.
"The sentence came in." Kallen choked out. "Twenty years." Her mother didn't react. Kallen glanced down, before looking back up and saying "Wait for me. I'll change it, and by the time you come out we can live together normally, so....so...." By now her voice was turning dangerously to sobs, when her mother's hand moved to cover her own, and she said:
"Do your best." Kallen looked back up. Her mother, other than her hand, hadn't moved an inch. "Do your best Kallen, my daughter." Crying silently now, Kallen covered her mother's hand with her own.
"I will." She promised. "I will."
- The Demon and The Dragon -
Outside the room, Learme readied himself. He was going to have to make himself invisible and silent to the three in the room, even Ms. Kozuki, despite her condition, in order to do what he was to do. In his right hand, the Lamperouge twin hefted a small needle, with a clear red solution of some sort in the vial.
"Don't." Lelouch said, from right behind him, startling the scarred brother.
"But I can cure her." Learme hissed, quieting himself. "With this N3, I can cure Kallen's mother-"
"You don't know that." Lelouch snapped. "You created N3 to fix nerve damage in general, and Nunnally in specific! You have no idea how it'll react to anyone else, or how it'll interact with the Refrain! And even if you fix Kallen's mother, then what!? She goes to prison for twenty years, and even if we succeed, it'll be a....bad experience, to say the least."
Learme, stubbornly, matched gazes with Lelouch, and almost went into the room regardless. Just before he did though, Lelouch grabbed him by the arm and stared more intensely at his twin, his left eye glowing red and showing the Geass sigil. Finally, Learme removed the vial from the syringe, stuffing the solution back into his pocket and dropping the syringe onto the ground, before walking out of the hospital.
- The Author -
Ok, this arc is finally over. And yes, I do have trouble with responsibility. It drives my mother and my teachers crazy. Actually, in retrospect, I think they've given up on trying.
One of the more interesting parts in this (aside from the touching familial love, which is not really my forte) is the Io's first combat introduction. Yes, it is a bit OP. Blame the guy whose name starts with a "V" and ends with an "elshard".
Anyway, we finally have a hint as to the only slightly repeated question of "Why the hell is Nunnally walking!?". Of all of you, I believe Velshard would be the one to guess the full answer, seeing as how he has experience in predicting the use of this specific 'cure'.
Also, Picton starts to further show is inexperience, the pompous lout, and has sentenced the last of his teammates to death. Idiot. Hmmm....Maybe he and Kewell......
Review Replies:
Thyrokio: Thanks, I wasn't sure if anyone would like them, since my strain of humorous sense doesn't really draw laughs in reality.....
Orchamus: Nah. Kallen and Learme have complementary skills that just shove them together in a military sense, and you tend to form closer bonds with those you work with.
Kojiro Kun: The Burai-O is really like Zero's custom Burai in the original, only the horns have more than decorative purposes and the color scheme is reversed.
Oh, Learme's Geass can do a lot. Soon enough, we ought to be seeing it used a smidge more.
Alex Yamato: They'll all have their new limited-production frames. Or, in the case of Kallen and Learme, custom prototype frames.
Most definitely.
Coming up next...after the tech chapter, I've put off revealing the Hafgan and Io for too long. A caution regarding the Io, since it's one of Velshard's designs, you'll need special eye-bandages for the bleeding.
I have the same problem, what with having recently acquired Mass Effect 2 and Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2.
Infinite Freedom: Close, but no cigar....not that I have any. It was good wasn't it?
And that precisely proves my point on the outdated animation. That and some of the Newtype moments were plain weird.
ByLanternLight: That's 17% higher than my Advanced Placement English grade! Thanks!
By the way, in a bit of shameless self-advertisement, if some of you who have yet to could read and review some of my other fics, like Gundam 00: The Meaning of Zero, and Gundam Seed: Killer's Realm, I'd be very thankful.
Knightmare Gundam of Ni