Ice flowed through Lelouch's veins. For years he had lived solely for her. The moment he looked away, the moment he allowed himself to put her second, the moment he allowed himself to chase his own ambitions...
"Lelouch."
The voice was quiet, the phone having dipped from beside his ear. He put it back in place. Yet an answer wasn't forthcoming. He needed to... He needed to... "I'm coming back."
"No you're not."
"I have to! She needs me! I can't just—!"
"You have no choice."
"How dare you?!" he demanded, his voice rising. "I trusted you to keep her safe! I put my faith in you and all that talk about us relying on each other! You were supposed to protect her!"
"And there is a body declaring I did exactly that. "There was no pause, no hesitation .She kept talking knowing he would interrupt again if given the chance. "Your sister is safe, the attacker's body is being destroyed as we speak, I, your maid, and the Ashford girl are in the viceroy's palace as we speak under more security than anyone else in the settlement. Even if some of that is Bartley's work over my sake. In any case, it means Nunnally has even more security watching over her. She is safe."
"I... She needs me. She—!"
"So you will abandon everything at this pivotal moment, all those who put their faith in you? Is that even best for her? Giving up on your ambitions, do you think you will be able to stop now? Start over from scratch? Or even abandon them entirely? Do you think that is a viable path forward? There are people who know now, Lelouch. Not many, but enough. The point of no return was some time ago."
He stayed silent.
He heard a sigh from the other end. A muffled 'You talk to him'.
"Lelouch?"
Milly's voice. "Milly! Is she—?!"
"She's not hurt at all," his lover answered. "She's a little shaken up. The experience must have brought back some awful memories, but Nunnally is strong. You know that."
She was. But everything had a limit. "Let me talk to her."
"Lelouch..." Why was she hesitating? "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"Why not?" A hard edge entered his voice. A tone he had never directed at Milly.
"Lelouch, she keeps talking about how you'll hate her. How you'll never forgive her for what she did, but she won't say what it was. Only... Apologising over and over again."
"That sounds a little more severe than 'shaken', Milly!" he snapped at her. She didn't respond. "Let me talk to her."
"Lelouch—"
"Milly. Put her. On the phone."
"... We're going to talk about you taking that tone with me when you get back." Even though there might have been threat in the words, Lelouch couldn't bring himself to care. There was no further response necessary as he heard her footsteps.. "Nunnally, Lelouch is on the phone. He—"
"No!" The voice was muffled, but clearly that of his sister. "He'll hate me! He'll hate me!"
"He doesn't hate you, sweetie. He's very worried about you after what happened. Can you talk to him, let him know you're okay? Please? For his sake?"
There was a muffled sound. A rustling. "Le-lelouch?" Her voice was loud and crackling, like she was holding the phone too tightly that it was rubbing against her skin.
"Nunnally," he answered, though wasn't sure how to continue from there.
Not that she gave him much chance to try. "Lelouch I'm sorry! I'm sorry! He knew everything! Everything I did! He's right! I'm an awful person! You should hate me! Please don't hate me! I'm sorry!"
"Nunnally." At least in this, he knew what he could say, and he could mean it with his entire being. "There's no world that exists where I could ever hate you."
"You don't understand! What I did to you! I can't—...!"
What she did to him? No. It still didn't matter. "Nunnally, I love you. I always will. That won't change no matter what."
"You don't understand! You...! You...!" His heart ached as her voice broke down into distraught sobbing.
"Lelouch."
Milly again. "... You were right. I'm sorry." It seemed he had made things worse. The most he could hope for was that his words would reach her eventually.
"Don't be. You're trying your best, I know that."
"Do you know what she was talking about?"
"No. Sayoko said the attacker knew things he couldn't possibly know and used it against both of them, but she won't tell me what it was. She insists it's... Something that will have to be discussed between you and Nunnally. In person." A moment of muffled static...
... Preceded another familiar voice taking over."Which means it will have to wait until your business in Kyushu is concluded."
"C.C.!"
"Oh, condemn and loathe me all you like, but I warned you what it entailed when you chose the path of the king. Now you must walk it."
A click. Tone.
She hung up on him.
The young man who would be emperor grit his teeth, his eyes clenched shut. The desire to throw the phone and smash it against a wall burned within him. An unfamiliar hot fury so unlike the cold resentment he usually nurtured. Such an outburst would achieve nothing. Worse, it would cut his one means of reliable contact with those he cared about. Impetuous rage wouldn't help him. It never had.
He was supposed to stay? And that was that? How could he do that? Nunnally needed him! He couldn't remember the last time he heard her sound so lost, so afraid, so desperate that she would beg him and push him away within sentences. He had to go back.
And yet... He couldn't.
The time was too pivotal. This faction, this first foray into uplifting the numbers into true Britannians, they had been a success so far but that success had to be followed by more. He couldn't stop. He couldn't leave. Couldn't lose the initiative. The invading fleet was making moves. Something was in the works. He had to be here to coordinate, to direct their coming operations. Build the reputation of this group, build a path to a brighter world, for Nunna— No! Not for her! No excuses! It wasn't for her! It was because it was a world he wanted to see, wanted to create! It was for him!
"Lelouch."
Staying was selfish. Nunnally needed him. He had to go.
"Lelouch!"
Leaving was selfish. The JSDF needed him. He had to stay.
"Hey, are you here or a hundred miles away?!"
"Hnh?" An inarticulate grunt escaped him as he realised someone had been talking to him. Not someone. "Ohgi. What is it?"
"What do you mean, 'What is it'?" the nominal leader of the JSDF asked with arms folded. "You've been sat staring at these monitors. I figured you'd have orders for how to respond to the fleet's movements."
The fleet's movements? The fleet's movements. He came back to the present, leaving aside his own dilemma. One monitor showed an overhead view of the fleet from an aircraft. The other showed a tactical screen showing ship outlines and positions in greater clarity. The fleet's manoeuvres were complete. At least, their new formation was complete. And they were moving. "West." They were moving west. All of them.
"Our assumption is they're trying to avoid a fight with a force they already lost to. Kallen and that Knight of Six are too much trouble on the shoreline and we've got them running scared instead of approaching the shore."
Not an inaccurate read. At least, putting them on the defensive was the goal. Slowing them down. Keeping them cautious to get more time. However... This was an oddly decisive response. Completely abandoning the battlefield they had already committed themselves to. Sunk cost would see most commanders keep trying, or at least come at the battle from a different angle. Quitting entirely was... "Oh." It was a little obvious now that he thought about it. "The defensive advantage comes with preparation time. An entrenched position. Cornelia and the local forces put the majority of their effort toward keeping the bridges secure. Fukuoka is more vulnerable on paper, fewer forces defending it. No Kallen, no Knight of Six, only Cornelia's personal forces."
No... No, that didn't make sense. Why would they believe such a thing would matter? Half of the reason knightmare frames changed the face of warfare was their adaptability and their alacrity. They could be moved and ready to fight in a new theatre within a matter of hours. Transporting the Lancelot and the Mordred to Fukuoka would take less time than the fleet getting there. Manpower might have been lacking in Fukuoka but it was an established Britannian military stronghold while Shimonoseki had to be actively fortified in preparation. Surely their commander understood this? The only thing that could be said in favour of this action was that it would be harder for the JSDF to act against them. Portman frames had to be deployed from land due to their relatively short time limit on deployments. Britannian forces could move relatively quickly, but by all indications the JSDF couldn't.
Yet... There was something strange about this. It was a gut feeling. Something was warning him. His instincts had caught something that his conscious mind hadn't.
"They're staying relatively close to the coast," Ohgi noted as he watched the tactical feed. "Shortest route, and they're confident because they don't have to worry about much in the way of artillery."
It was reckless. It gave Portmans the best chance of attacking them en route.
He should have seen it. He should have known what he was looking at the moment he saw it. But he didn't. Instead, what Lelouch saw was another quick opportunity to build the JSDF's reputation. To prove his ideals all the faster.
To get back to Nunnally all the faster.
Transportation, determining a proper deployment point. He pulled up a map of the coast. "Get the Third Dans and our Portman pilots! We need to move quickly before we lose this opportunity!"
He wanted to work quickly. He wanted to establish his intent all the faster. And so he made another call as Ohgi left.
-(-)-
"Well, we're certainly getting a workout running back and forth like this aren't we?!" Lloyd exclaimed with his usual frantic energy. In this case, it was less out of nervousness and more out of a hope to cut through the dreary atmosphere of ASEEC's trailer as they rode westward toward Fukuoka.
"... We're in a truck, Lloyd," Kallen answered glumly.
"Aha, ahaha! So we are, so we are!" the engineer replied, nervously rubbing his neck.
Cecile sighed, locking between her boss and the despondent knight crouched against the wall of the trailer, staring up at her machine. "For what little it might be worth, Sir Stadtfeld. I respect what you tried to do. The purebloods have always been overly enthusiastic about ensuring the numbers stay at the bottom of society."
Overly enthusiastic. Implying a certain amount of enthusiasm for that was appropriate. That was Kallen's instinctual read of what was said. But, Cecile didn't mean it like that. As far as she could tell, Cecile had no stake in such concerns, and so had very little opinion on them. "Well... I'm glad someone does."
The purebloods had made their feelings about her actions known absurdly quickly. Informed Clovis and Cornelia both. Clovis was unsympathetic as expected, given he was in Lelouch's pocket. Cornelia on the other hand... Well, she was a practical woman but she had the expected Britannian views. She was furious with Kallen for undercutting her superiors for numbers. But at the same time she was furious with the purebloods for needlessly antagonising approximately a quarter of their logistical support. The Japanese weren't allowed to carry weapons, which meant they made for poor soldiers. As a natural consequence they were largely used for menial tasks, bottom rung logistical tasks. Moving things, cleaning things, providing the most basic services that were fundamental to a military. Threatening summary executions for such people based on absolutely no evidence was beyond the pale, more likely to get the Japanese to actively defect than to reveal a conspiracy already in progress.
No sentiment. Only practicality. The purebloods' actions would hurt the war effort. As far as the Witch of Britannia was concerned, that was all that mattered. Kallen mentally scoffed. Maybe she should be impressed. As far as most Britannians were concerned, it was an enlightened perspective.
But the outcome was inevitable. ASEEC were being redeployed elsewhere, moved back to Fukuoka. Whether it be the purebloods doing something stupid out of retaliation or just understandable friction and doubt in the chain of command, Kallen couldn't share a battlefield with them any time soon. Along with her, many of the honorary Britannians were also being redeployed alongside some of the defensive forces. The Chinese were moving west and a more formidable attack at the main military base on Kyushu was expected. Gottwald was unlikely to need the personnel while Cornelia would.
It was... Better. In the end, it was a better outcome than she might have expected. She worried about the Japanese left behind with the devout supremacists but there was nothing she could do.
Would they even want her to do anything? That one so furious with the JSDF probably didn't think so.
An annoying ringing made the pilot wince, the noise reverberating off the trailer walls. "Sorry, sorry!" Lloyd shouted, not exactly improving on the obnoxious sound with his own voice. "Hello? Yes... Yes... So Cornelia doesn't—? Ahahaha! Sorry, sorry! Yes, I understand! Yes! On our way!" The eccentric scientist ended the call, stared at his phone for a moment. "Well, change of plans! Looks like we're getting special orders!"
-(-)-
The logistics of the plan were a rush job.
"You need to get the Portman frames halfway to Fukuoka while everyone is watching that road?! Are you crazy?!"
"It can be done. I'll make sure we won't be bothered on the way there."
The tactics of the plan were a rush job.
"We have a handful of viable attack vectors. It seems the ships are taking time to check their route for defensive emplacements as they travel. We don't have the time to check pros and cons of each and every one so we're going with one of the more viable without being entirely obvious. Katsu Island lets us stay anonymous, barely worth noticing, no infrastructure to speak of. We won't be able to offer much support at all during the mission so don't take unnecessary risks. You'll be operating in pairs just like the previous mission. Watch each other's backs. They are aware of the threat we pose now."
The execution was a rush job.
"Team N1 deploying!"
"N2 deploying!"
"R1 diving!"
"R2 diving!"
"B1 taking watch position!"
"B2 covering!"
Lelouch settled in. Watching from the command position alongside Ohgi. They had headquartered at the docks just south-east of Katsu Island, a location from which they could get a fairly reliable read of the battle, as best they could from a coastal position. Neither Lelouch nor Ohgi had proven capable of piloting the aquatic knightmare. Ohgi climbing out of one in the promotional video was a PR stunt. They couldn't get closer, and they couldn't help in any meaningful way except by having a broader view of the changing situation.
"... It's weird how they keep splitting their fleet around the larger islands, isn't it?" Ohgi asked. Not an observation phrased as a question. A genuine question. A former schoolteacher turned urban resistance leader didn't know much at all about naval warfare.
"Yes and no," Lelouch answered. "They can communicate fine even if they can't maintain visual on the entire fleet. It can be the easier method of passing obstructions than diverting the entire fleet off course to make room or spreading lengthways and weakening their formation. It means they have to coordinate re-establishing their formation once they join back together, but that is less of a problem once they're all facing the right direction as they are now."
"... That sounded like the 'no' part of the answer. What's the 'yes' part?"
The 'yes' part was that they knew they were facing an enemy quietly and invisibly attacking them from under the water. Spreading themselves out like this... It was like they were inviting an attack. Though, they were close to the coast, but not that close. It was still quite a substantial distance for the Portmans to traverse...
Dread crept into his heart. The slow dawning realisation that he might have been played.
But it was too late."N1 emerging."
N1 had reached the primary target first. A battleship. A tempting target. Too tempting to ignore. It was bait! All of this was bait! "N1! Submerge and ping all diving units! Abandon the mission and return to the rendezvous point!"
"What? But we just—"
"Sugiyama, get back here now!" Ohgi had no idea what had changed, but was aware enough to roll with it if the usually calm and controlled Lelouch was suddenly panicked.
"What the f—!"
Light bloomed in the distance. Not the pillar of doom they had planned for. Not even close. Instead to those at the rendezvous point it was only a glimmer of blue and gold.
"Sugiyama! SUGIYAMA!" Ohgi barked into the radio.
"N1 respond! B group, what's going on out there?!"
"Enemy units!" Sugiyama's voice answered first. "It's an ambush! My frame is compromised! I can't dive again! I— AHHHH—!"
Signal lost. No sign of ejection.
"... Sugiyama..." Ohgi whispered.
"This is B1!" Inoue's voice spoke urgently through the radio. "Enemy frames on deck of secondary targets 2 and 3, as well as the primary target! Unknown frame is firing some kind of beam into the water!"
Lelouch grit his teeth harder. This whole thing was one huge setup! IFF signals for N1 were lost and he wouldn't know the status of the other units until— "N2 emerging under fire! What the hell is going on?! Is that thing trying to boil us?!"
IFF signals coming through! N2, R1 and... Half of R2 had emerged from the water to land on the primary target. Which meant they were trapped on a battleship, surrounded by enemies, and a new frame with some kind of new weapon. A message was quickly sent. In the distance, the sound of an aircraft taking off could be heard. "All deployed units, hold your ground! Reinforcements are inbound!"
"Oh yeah, no problem at all!" R2 responded acerbically.
"B group! Support fire!" If they figured out where that support fire was coming from, that could be a problem, but everything was already a problem. "Be ready to disengage and eject in the event of return fire!" Only the nearer ships were in range of their weapons, but that was not true in the other direction. This had the potential to go from bad to worse. It would have been better to abandon the mission entirely. Five pilots... There would be many more lost than just them in the course of this war. But this was Lelouch's mistake, and for all of his talk of willingness to make necessary sacrifices, he was still young. Still inexperienced. He struggled to leave them with the consequences of his mistakes.
And so the mission continued. For better or worse.
-(-)-
Airdrop. This was a new experience. A new, mildly terrifying experience. Or maybe it was only terrifying for what she was dropping into.
"Remember, Sir Stadtfeld! The Lancelot is not rated for aquatic manoeuvres and you still don't have an ejection system!" Lloyd helpfully reminded her through her radio. "So if you end up in the water, the Lancelot is likely to short out and sink to the bottom of the sea!"
"Thank you, Lloyd!" Kallen replied through gritted teeth.
"But, but the cockpit itself is water-tight!" Cecile added in an attempt to be reassuring. "So we'll be able to retrieve you!"
"Hopefully before your air runs out!" Lloyd added.
He was brilliant. He didn't care one bit about Britannian ideals. She was ninety percent sure even if he knew she was half Japanese he wouldn't care at all. Yet times like this made her hate him.
Kallen had thought this operation was on Cornelia's orders. That opinion had held up until they witnessed an ongoing attack on the passing Federation fleet. An ongoing attack not far at all from where she was prepped and ready to launch, but without any tactical or strategic briefing of what was happening. The attack had begun, and only moments later the order was given to send her in.
This had Lelouch's fingerprints all over it. Orders so simple she was expected to assess the situation and already understand. And as they neared, she did. Her factspheres scanned the nearest ships. Enemy units engaging a handful of Portman frames that were massively overwhelmed and disadvantaged out of the water. Yet for some reason hadn't submerged again. They were pinned down by Gun-Ru and whatever that brightly coloured knightmare was so they had lost the opportunity to do so.
That only mattered for the machines on the ships though. For the ship guns, there was only one target. Her.
"Taking evasive manoeuvres!" the aircraft pilot announced to her as it banked to avoid anti aircraft fire. They were flying low to avoid as much of it as they could, but only so much was possible. Moving her arm as much as she could in the Lancelot's transport configuration, she raised the Blaze Luminous system. None too soon as the green energy shield caught a shot that sent their craft reeling from the impact force alone.
"Sir Stadtfeld, your energy levels just dropped severely!"
"Yeah, catching shots from big guns will do that!"
"Shit! Shit! Get ready to deploy!" the pilot warned her.
"What?!"
"It's too hot! You either drop now or we both go down!" He didn't give her much more warning than that. Only released the cargo locks and let her drop. "Good luck!"
"YOU ASSHOLE!" she shouted back at him as she was released to freefall toward the sea below. Though her anger died as she watched the aircraft get shredded by the anti-aircraft guns as it tried to turn around.
... She could feel bad about that later! "Shit! Shit!" She was falling fast. Would hit the water and it would be over. If he had dropped her a little closer she might have been able to latch herself to a ship with a slash harken.
... She was going to hit the water. Hit, the water. "I hope this works!" Once again, deployed the Blaze Luminous as she sailed forward and downward. The sound of the shield impacting the water was nothing on the sensation of the entire machine suddenly and rapidly changing direction. The force of it felt like someone decided to tenderise her organs all at once. Her brain shook. Her stomach lurched. But she didn't have time to worry about any of that as she made a short bounce further toward her target. Squinting her eyes, trying to force her vision to clear, she fired her harkens at the hull of a ship. Dragged herself toward it to flip and roll over the side.
She really wished Lloyd would stop squealing with joy over the radio. It was making it really hard to get her head in the game.
"Sir Stadtfeld, the chances of that working were... Terrifyingly slim," Cecile said, replacing the keening whine of Lloyd's glee. "Please don't attempt that again."
"Thank you, more important things to worry about right now, thanks!" Kallen answered, her shield raised to absorb incoming fire as she fled to cover. From there, she skated around that cover to get at the multiple Gun Ru that were still turning to put her in the crosshairs again. Swords drawn, she carved through them as she moved from one end of the ship to another, then used her harkens to grapple onto the next ship.
The one with the more dangerous target on it. Whatever that mystery knightmare was, it was something a little more significant than the mass produced trash frames.
It proved it when as she launched herself over to the next ship, the machine turned toward her and its chest glowed brightly. A beam of energy emerged from it, slamming into her hastily raised shield and sending her off course. The Lancelot landed well enough, in the following instants carving through another unfortunate Gun Ru that happened to be in the way.
"It is your people's courtesy to give your name to an opponent," the mystery frame announced through its speakers.
It was. And the man, because it was clearly a man's voice, could have been talking about either of her heritages in that case. Unfortunately Lloyd and Cecile were still listening so, "Sir Kallen Stadtfeld. Yours?"
"I am Li Xingke, Field Commander of the Chinese Federation forces."
Field Commander. So he was a real lead from the front kind of guy. She could respect that. "So..." She could see the Portman frames making their escape into the water now that the Federation had been distracted by a bigger target. "You're the guy trying to conquer Japan for the Chinese."
"I am..." There was a heavy pause. "I am tasked with liberating Japan from Britannian oppression."
"Yeah, you don't believe that any more than anybody else does."
"And yet I will ensure we succeed." The stance of the machine lowered a little as it drew a blade. "That so-called JSDF. I see what it is now. Your arrival to support them proves it. Now that I know they are only another Britannian weapon wielded in an unconventional manner, removing you from the board is a higher priority."
"Not happening!" Kallen moved, Lancelot weaving past and cleaving through a Gun Ru that fired on her. It seemed the moment she made a hostile action the courtesy offered had ended. Once again the Gun Ru proved their lack of worth as they attempted to harass her, but they were at least enough for the main threat to get the first move. A slash harken cutting off her path as the chest cannon charged another shot. Rather than stop, the Lancelot dipped low and swung upward with its blade, carving through the line. Though, as she did, the Lancelot didn't seem to appreciate it as it jerked against her control. It swiftly recovered, but the oddity cost time and focus, robbing her of the chance to counterattack as the beam weapon missed her entirely.
"Ah, it's one of her designs, I just know it!" Lloyd complained. "Sir Stadtfeld, I'm afraid you might be facing a near peer to the Lancelot. If you could take it intact, I would greatly appreciate it."
"Kind of busy right now!" Kallen answered as she tuned Lloyd's voice out to focus on her clash with the Chinese general. Or admiral. Whatever he was supposed to be. Blade against blade, it was the first weapon that managed to hold up against the maser vibration sword. What cut clean through the armour of knightmare frames could only make sparks with every clash against the knightmare scale shortsword in Xingke's hand. Unfortunately, he seemed to know much better how to use the weapon than she knew how to use hers. Swords were never her thing. She could feel the difference in how they could move. Xingke's machine couldn't keep up with her, or maybe Xingke himself couldn't, but he compensated with having much more skill in this type of fight. Each clash of blades was a demonstration of his ability to push her in ways that favoured him, yet her capacity for knightmare combat denied him the chance to make the most of it.
A slash met and deflected, he would follow up, but the Lancelot would dance out of the way, coming at him from another angle. That too, taken and turned against her, retaliated with something a little more fast in the form of a second slash harken. Something she now knew to avoid rather than disarm in a fast paced battle like this.
It wasn't working. She had to change tactics. Switch to something a little more her speed than a dance with fancy swordplay. And so as she launched herself at Xingke, this time she did so with a wall of green light making impact as opposed to her sword. She slammed into her enemy, knocked his weapon aside with a battering ram he couldn't deflect if he wanted to. Then charged into him with it. Lowered her shield so she could drive at him with her own sword while he had no way to defend himself.
She deactivated the Blaze Luminous... And then quickly reactivated it as she saw the telling glow of the chest piece.
"Sir Stadtfeld! Your energy filler is—!" Cecile called out over the radio.
"I know!" A sustained beam of energy cascading over the shield was draining enormous amounts of power but it wasn't like she could lower it!
Luckily for her, the beam stopped. And the reason was immediately obvious. At such close range, that energy had nowhere to go. The chest armour of the enemy knightmare had suffered badly for the backlash and the weapon had failed.
But she only had a glimpse before the machine retreated. Even if Xingke wasn't as skilled a pilot, his machine could move just as well as hers could. "Impressive." She tried to chase, but more trash machines emerged to get in her way. Did he have these in reserve the whole time? "I hoped I could defeat you myself. It would have been beneficial to me personally to do so. Unfortunately not."
"You think these things'll stop me?!" Kallen demanded. She'd carved through plenty, and then all she'd have to do would be to body check this guy again and take him out.
"No." He pointed up and to one side with his sword. "But you will die regardless."
"Sir Stadtfeld! Incoming fire on your location!" Cecile shouted.
She turned to look. Saw a curtain of missiles streaking upward from another ship. They were going to take out their own ship just to kill her? She felt a flutter of pride at being so feared they'd go that far, but it was vastly overwhelmed by the feeling of alarm. She glimpsed Xingke escaping onto another small ship from where he had retreated to, that vessel making all speed to get away from what was about to happen. She had no choice. She had to escape! Her sword slashed out at a Gun Ru, slingshotted herself around another with slash harkens to drag herself all the faster to the edge of the ship.
"Sir Stadtfeld, that won't—!"
"This or dying!" Kallen shouted back over the radio before the warning was even finished. Maybe it would work! It worked last time! Throwing herself off the ship she once again deployed the Blaze Luminous. Maybe she could ride it back to shore like a surfboard or—!
She plummeted over the edge, the shield slapped the water, and the Lancelot sank below the waves.
As Kallen watched the destruction rain down above her, as her factspheres shorted out alongside any propulsion systems, as she sank down to the sea floor in her elaborate metal coffin... Kallen was just glad the radio stopped working first.
She was glad she didn't have to hear 'I told you so'.