Turn Fifteen: The Goddess of Battle
"No one, in good conscience, should ever accuse Cornelia li Britannia of being cold or corrupt; in fact, she was probably one of the least understood members of the Royal Britannian Family. Princess Cornelia never really intended to usurp or overthrow Nunnally, but the Royal Britannian houses were loath to allow Cornelia to step down once she had taken the throne. It was only her pure and unconquerable will that gave her the strength to resist the vile whisperings of the Britannian nobles that beckoned her to seize the crown for herself forever. In many ways, the world owes Cornelia a debt of gratitude, because without her efforts to rout the corrupt movers and shakers out of this world, it would still be under their power today.” —Excerpt from an interview with Colonel Guilford by Milly Ashford for the Japan Broadcasting Station, dated March 12th, 2026 a.t.b.
"Keep firing!" Cornelia boomed as she stood up from her command chair on the bridge of the Avenger. The EU airships in the distance were moving away from the Eifel Tower in order to avoid damaging the French relic.
"Princess, our forward KnightMare units have overrun the Parisian defenses," Guilford said triumphantly as another of the EU airships exploded in midair. "President Gerard LeBlanc wishes to discuss terms of surrender."
"Which ship is his?" Cornelia asked Guilford with a scowl.
"The Longres class just to the north of the Eifel Tower," he told her.
"Target that ship and give him our answer, Guilford," she commanded in an icy tone.
"Yes, milady." Guilford turned to the gunner and nodded.
A full barrage of cannon fire from the Avenger cut through LeBlanc's ship with pinpoint accuracy and blew the French president's aerial warship to smithereens.
"Direct hit!" Guilford blurted out.
"Excellent work." Cornelia smiled as the last of the French aerial defense fleet succumbed to her armada of warships. "First England, then Spain, and now France; soon all of Europe will be purged of these impudent weaklings, and we will bring peace to this continent."
"Princess Cornelia, Lord Byron of our 115th Mechanized Unit would like your permission to liquidate the remaining forces," Guilford said.
"No..." Cornelia said softly. "Disarm them, and give them three hot meals and a cot while in our care. Inform Byron to spread the word that any European commoners who wish to surrender to us may do so, and they will be unharmed. We have no ill will towards the population here, only their actual leadership. Tell Lord Byron that this is my command, and that there will be severe consequences to any within our forces who disobey my orders." She turned to her Knight. "Is that understood, Guilford?"
Guilford was shocked at her generosity to the enemy prisoners but did not question her. "Yes, milady, it is."
Cornelia saw the uncertainty in his eyes. "I'm not going to repeat the mistakes of my father and brothers, Guilford. I don't want to be seen as anything other than a liberator. I'm here to win the hearts and minds of these people, not terrorize them into submission like some totalitarian tyrant...I've been down that road before. Peace isn't going to be won at the end of a gun or the lash of a political whip. It's time we learned that war is a result of tyrannical governments not people, and that those of us in charge of government must learn to give power back to those who do not have it. Our exile in South America taught me that there is nothing more precious in this life than being master of your own destiny. That is what I want to bring to the world, Guilford. I want to conquer it to give it back to the common people...I want to free it."
Guilford only smiled in response.
* * *
"What happened to C2?" Suzaku barked at Enoch.
"Well...I...uh...I don't know just yet," Enoch stuttered.
"Are we really at Ashford?" Nunnally was still in awe of how they got from Enoch's castle to the library of her former school by simply walking through a doorway.
"Yes," Enoch told her for the umpteenth time as he checked the back of Suzaku’s head, "we're really at Ashford."
"We need to go find out if C2 is okay, Enoch...or whoever you are!" Suzaku snapped at him and sat up. "I owe her a debt...and I can't just abandon her."
"Okay, okay!" Enoch put up his hands. "We'll go hunt down the Green Goddess of Gorgeous just as soon as I make sure you’re alright!"
The Red Dragon snickered, "You better not let Isadora hear you say that."
"Ah...heh," Enoch sniggered as he put his hand on the back of Suzaku’s head. "Yah...she'd kill me."
"I'm fine!" Suzaku bellowed recoiling from Enoch’s hand.
"Shhhh," Nunnally scolded him. "We don't want anyone to hear us, and if you yell like that, Suzaku, we'll be discovered."
"The empress is right," Enoch told Suzaku. "We need to get to the old Britannian Special Intelligence’s secret underground facilities through the library passage as quickly as we can."
"How do you know about those?" Suzaku inquired.
"Best not to ask," Enoch tittered as he helped Suzaku to his feet.
"Ouch!" Suzaku put his hand on a sore spot at the back of his neck.
Enoch put his arm around Kururugi to help him walk. "Let me help you. You suffered a minor concussion. Considering you were at ground zero of a FLEIJA detonation, I'd say you're lucky to still be in one piece."
"I'm alright." Suzaku tried to remove Enoch's arm but couldn't budge it.
Enoch removed his arm slowly to see if Kururugi could support himself and walk. "You sure you're okay?"
"I told you I'm fine," he grumbled.
"Very well then, we should get to the underground facilities immediately." Enoch led the way with the others right behind him.
They wove through the tall bookshelves towards the staircase that led to the bank of bookshelves that contained the concealed elevator door.
"Can you believe Kyoto was completely destroyed?" a young girl's voice echoed a few aisles away from Enoch and his troop.
"I'm so glad everybody got out okay," her female companion replied with a sigh of relief. "The casualties would have been massive if the Black Knights hadn't stopped Schneizel."
"WHAT!" Suzaku blurted out in surprise upon discovering that the first FLIEJA he had fired at Charybdis, which the metal beast then redirected, did not kill the millions he thought it had.
The Red Dragon grabbed him and put her hand over his mouth. "Please, Suzaku," she whispered to him at too low a frequency for her voice modulator to compensate.
His eyes grew wide as her soft voice penetrated his ears and sank into psyche, but he didn't dare say anything.
"Did you hear something?" the first female student asked her friend.
"Yah," the other girl said in a nervous tone.
"Is anybody in here?" the first girl asked in a loud voice.
Enoch peeked around the bookshelf at the opposite end of the row and motioned for the others to move towards the stair.
The Red Dragon led the way as Nunnally and Suzaku followed. Enoch watched them make their way towards the lower level. As soon as their attention was turned away from him, he outstretched his right hand towards a bookshelf he could see on the far end of the library and made a grasping motion; a row of books fell from the shelf.
"WHO'S OVER THERE?" the first girl yelled.
"You'd better have a hall pass!" the other girl said as they ran over to the fallen books in the opposite direction of Enoch and his companions.
The pair of students came upon the pile of books that Enoch had "pulled" off the shelf as he and his companions entered the elevator.
"That was close," Nunnally said as soon as the doors closed.
"Yes, it was," the Red Dragon agreed. "Are you alright, Suzaku?" she asked noticing his distraught expression.
Suzaku was shaking slightly as his mind contemplated the revelation of what the Red Dragon's real voice meant.
“Hey.” Enoch put his hand on Kururugi’s shoulder. “You’re not having a seizure on me, are you?”
Suzaku looked up at him and shook his head slowly. “No…I…it’s nothing, just a mild relapse of my concussion; it’ll pass quickly," he lied.
Enoch gave him a knowing smile. “I know; relapses can have heartrending results.” Enoch slapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Speaking of passing quickly…we need to get you two to Britannia as fast as we can.”
“Why don’t we go back to Kaminejima and use the Thought Elevator to transport ourselves to Neo-Pendragon like we had planned?” Nunnally asked Enoch.
“That’s an excellent idea, Nunnally,” Enoch smiled.
“If it’s such an excellent idea, then why are we going to the sublevels of Ashford?” the Red Dragon asked in a dull tone.
Enoch gave her a boyish grin. “We need to pick up a few things first.”
“What things?” Nunnally asked as the elevator doors opened up into the underground chambers.
Memories of Rolo and Villetta keeping a watchful eye on Zero flooded through Suzaku’s head as he looked over at the door that led to the surveillance room he once used to monitor Lelouch Lamperouge. His attention turned to the Red Dragon. If she’s who I think she is…then all of that was for nothing. The hatred that drove me to betray my best friend and force him to live a lie under the spell of his father just to try and satisfy my anger over him having murdered her would have been all wrong. If she had been alive that whole time…that would make me a monster.
He remembered what he had asked Lelouch while he had his head under his heel at the Kururugi Shrine: Can you bring Euphie back?
Anger burned in Suzaku; he hated himself at that moment. What an idiot I’ve been. How could I have held onto such hatred when I knew that Lelouch had lied to me about her death? I knew he must have killed her by accident. Euphemia would have forgiven Lelouch if he had accidentally killed me. Why didn’t I do the same?
“Earth calling Suzaku.” Enoch was staring at him from the far end of the hall they had walked out into.
“Huh? Oh, sorry…what were you saying?” Suzaku snapped out of his private thoughts and sprinted up to where they were patiently waiting for him. Kururugi stopped at the large double doors that his companions stood before.
Enoch put his hand over a touchpad on the wall. “I was saying that what we’ve come here for is behind these doors.”
“When was this added?” Suzaku asked upon seeing the unfamiliar egress open into a vast chamber underneath Ashford.
“I put it here when I attended Ashford,” Enoch snickered.
“How could an old man like you attend Ashford?” Suzaku asked the gray-haired bearded man in disbelief.
Enoch pulled at his beard and flipped off the skintight mask he wore with a single fluid motion. Beneath the façade was the face of a twenty-five-year-old man with amber eyes and dark black hair. His complexion shone a faint gold in the overhead fluorescent lights of the large chamber they entered.
“Who the hell are you?” Suzaku inquired in an awestruck tone.
Enoch gave him a devilish grin. “No one of consequence.”
* * *
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Lelouch?” C.C. asked him as he picked up the mask of Zero from within his former coffin.
“If Medusa is correct, then Suzaku is dead, and from what you’ve told me, Tohdoh and the others knew that Suzaku was Zero. That circumstance is of great advantage to me.” He put on the mask. “No one will suspect who I really am.”
“Sure…” She frowned sarcastically and folded her arms. “They’re all so stupid that as soon as you start using that strategic mind of yours they’re just going to assume that Suzaku was a closet genius or maybe he took some crash correspondence courses in military warfare. Not to mention your voice.”
“Ha, ha,” he said in a dry sarcastic tone. Lelouch used his Zero voice, “How do I sound?”
C.C. gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Like Zero…Lelouch’s Zero.”
“You’re not helping,” he mumbled.
“I told you I think this is a bad idea, Lelouch,” C.C. pouted. “Why do you need to do this?”
“Because I’m responsible for letting Schneizel live and thus causing this whole mess,” he said firmly. “Now it’s my burden to correct that mistake.”
C.C. was not so easily swayed. “Someone else could have just as easily stumbled upon the Olympians and released them. How is it your fault that they were awakened?”
“It’s not,” he told her firmly. “But the fact that Schneizel, who knew the inner workings of both Britannia and the Black Knights, was still alive to find them is my fault. These Greeks have the advantage over the UFN because of me! The world I created came to an end because of my arrogant assumption that nothing would derail what I set in place. I gambled with fate and fate won.”
He had successfully countered her objection. “So, you think that it was Schneizel’s destiny to find them and for you to spare him, is that it?”
“The events of the world aren’t predestined to happen, nor are they the random result of man’s choices in life.” Lelouch started down the stairs of the dais. “It is a combination of both forces intermixed. Like two poles of an electrical motor. The chaotic pole is eternally at odds with the ordered pole thus causing motion in the world. There are ebbs and flows to the currents of chaos and order, what we perceive as good and evil. It’s just a matter of seizing upon the right moment in order to make a change, but that change cannot be at odds with the order of the world or else it is rejected and crumbles into chaos. That’s what was wrong with my world. It was a world created by hate in order to bring about peace instead of a world created by love in order to wage war with honor. Peace isn’t something that men were meant to live in for long periods of time. We’re creatures of action not stagnant rocks upon the ground. We are like the whole of the living universe around us and thus violent by nature. I failed to see the value of diversity and hardship before, but now I see that lasting peace, even for a short time, brings with it evils of its own.”
“Does that mean you’re not going to sue for peace this time?” C.C. was concerned about where he was going with this new revelation.
“Not after what Medusa told me.” He stopped and turned. The mask of Zero looked at her. “This time the Demon is going to act like an angel and become the sword of God.”
“I had a feeling you would saying something like that.” C.C. came up next to him and took hold of his arm. “Very well,” she sighed. “Once more unto the breech, my love.”
He caressed her chin. “I don’t deserve you.”
“I know,” she snickered as they made their way towards the entrance of the tomb.
Medusa met them at the egress with a distraught look.
“What is it, Medusa?” Zero asked.
“We have visitors,” she replied as the Red Dragon walked up behind her.
* * *
“How soon will you be ready to return?” Sthenno asked the image of Medea on the viewscreen in front of her.
“We shall have completed loading the Ithaca with Golden Apple within the hour,” Medea told her with a grin.
“Good.” Sthenno’s expression remained stone. “We need to consolidate our forces quickly. The UFN has already begun its counteroffensive, and our forces are too depleted to maintain control of Asia or Australia for much longer.” She wondered where Schneizel could be. “We must assume that our enemy now knows of our plans and is moving to thwart us even as we speak.”
“What of our Cyclops forces? They could help us maintain control of our current territories,” Medea suggested, knowing that the Cyclops Automatos were among the most powerful weapons within the Tartarian arsenal.
“They will remain here for now,” Sthenno smiled wickedly. “I suspect that when the UFN makes its move on us we’ll need them.”
Medea laughed, “You’re leading them into a trap.”
“I never actually trusted my champion, Prince Schneizel. I knew that there was the strong possibility that he’d betray me the first chance that he got.” She raised a brow. “I gave him that opportunity by sending him to South America on his own. I used the planetary surveyor system of Tartarus to find his location.”
“Oh?” Medea snickered. “So, where is your champion now?”
“His ship is hovering over a small island in the South Pacific Ocean. I can only assume it is some secret base of his.” Sthenno seemed irritated. “Fortunately, I’ve placed spies among his crew who’ve kept me informed of his plot.”
Medea saw that Sthenno was hiding something. “I understand your annoyance at this champion betraying you, milady, but you seem far more troubled than the situation merits.”
“I am,” Sthenno told her somberly. “My sister, Medusa, has succumbed to the power of another sorcerer.”
“WHAT?” Medea was shocked. “How can you be certain?”
“I spoke to her yesterday about her so-called success in Japan, but something about her demeanor bothered me. She was strained in her speech and unlike her normal self. Therefore, I used the planetary surveyor to scan the Japan region.”
“And?” Medea was anxious to hear what troubled her superior so.
“The Argos is there above the remains of the Japanese city of Kyoto. Jason’s men are bound to him by honor, friendship, and a loyalty that is not easily matched even by the bonds of love.” Sthenno sighed in frustration. “They would have sacrificed themselves rather than see their captain killed. Since the Argos lives, Jason in turn must be alive, and my sister Medusa must have succumbed to the power of another for she would never lie to me of her own accord.”
“I see,” Medea said with a sinister smile. “Shall I take care of Jason and retrieve your dear sister?”
“No,” Sthenno answered with a distraught look in her eyes. “With the Golden Apple you have acquired, it is now possible for us to power up Tartarus and use it.”
“But I thought we still needed the Golden Apple from Japan?” Medea was confused.
“No,” Sthenno stated with a glint in her eyes. “That was a lie I told to ensure that we’d acquire the element from Africa, as that store was much less than the mines of Mount Fuji but more than sufficient for our needs. In reality, we’ve enough with the shipment you’re bringing to have Tartarus brought up to full power and restore all of its systems.” Her eyes narrowed as her grin widened. “Including the Apollyon.”
* * *
“Wow!” Lloyd exclaimed in awe of the large Greek Kolossos-Automatos Gorgon as his team lifted it up towards the Avalon. He and Cecile stood at the spot where the machine had run out of power on Kamine Island.
“It’s quite a machine, isn’t it?” Cecile remarked to Professor Asplund as they watched the large mecha get loaded into the lower hangar bay.
“Yes, it is.” Lloyd put his hands on his hips. “It’s a pity we have to share this technological marvel with Rakshata.”
“Don’t you mean the UFN?” Cecile tittered.
Lloyd adjusted his glasses. “No, I mean Rakshata.”
Major Croomy giggled, “Oh, I suppose to you that’s much worse.”
“OF COURSE IT IS!” Lloyd bellowed. “The woman’s acting like I’M HER ASSISTANT in all of this. As if she knows more about KnightMare Frame mechanisms than I do! Ohhhhhh, the audacity of that woman!”
Cecile thought back to the ejected pilot’s compartment they had found here on Kaminejima. “What do you think happened to the pilot of the Lancelot of the Lake, Lloyd?”
Lloyd threw his arms up in the air. “Oh, Ms. Croomy! Is that all you can think about at a time like this? My whole life is being ruined by that awful woman, and all you can rattle on about is the fate of a pilot who was obviously well enough to open the hatch and walk out of the cockpit. He’s probably at a sushi bar with geishas on each side of him in Neo-Tokyo living it up right now while I’m here positively dying of humiliation at the hands of that Indian tigress!”
“You think he’s okay?” Cecile inquired again.
“YES!” Lloyd said. “Why do you want to know if this pilot is okay so badly?”
Cecile held up the key to the Lancelot of the Lake; on its ring was the white-winged pin that Euphemia had given Suzaku as a symbol of his being her personal Knight.
Lloyd took the pin from Cecile and examined it closely. He sighed, “It’s his alright.”
“I thought he was dead, Lloyd.” Cecile sounded hurt. She had been very fond of Suzaku…maybe even in love with him, though even she wasn’t sure of her feelings for the former Britannian Devicer.
“Perhaps he gave it to someone else…” Lloyd started to say.
Cecile’s eyes narrowed. “Lloyd,” she grouched.
Lloyd stuttered defensively, “Yes…well, I suppose he’d never part with it…it being Euphemia’s gift to him and all.”
“Exactly.” Cecile took the pin back from Professor Asplund and twirled it slowly. “Which means he’s alive out there someplace.”
“That’s odd,” Lloyd stated absentmindedly as a line of metallic dots came into view in the distance over the ocean.
“What’s odd, Lloyd?” Cecile asked him before she also noticed the specks of reflected light on the horizon.
“Professor Asplund,” a male voice called frantically over the radio Lloyd had on his utility belt.
“Mmm…yes?” Lloyd asked nonchalantly.
“We’re under attack!” the man shouted. “It’s the Britannian air force!”
“Oh…well, is the enemy KnightMare secure?” Lloyd inquired.
“WHAT?” the man asked.
Cecile grabbed the radio from Lloyd. “Don’t mind him, Lieutenant; just have Kallen and her Black Knights launch immediately and get someone down here to pick us up.”
“Yes, Major,” the lieutenant replied obediently and cut off the channel.
“What should we do?” Lloyd asked Cecile with a worried look as the dots became a discernable fleet of warships. “I haven’t the foggiest idea how fast those vessels are, but I doubt we have much time.”
“You don’t,” a male voice said from behind them.
Lloyd and Cecile were stunned upon seeing C.C., Nunnally, and Zero standing before them.
* * *
“Kallen, we’ve got six bogeys incoming at three-o’clock!” Gino said as the Yamato no Orochi moved in to intercept any KnightMare Frames that attempted to assault the Avalon.
“They look like Vincent Wards,” Tamaki blurted out as he fired a salvo of energy discs at the leader of the Britannian machines.
The baby-blue Vincent with pink highlights spun out of the way of Tamaki’s volley easily and unloaded a hail of autocannon rounds at him from the four-barrel gunpod of the machine.
“That’s not a typical Vincent!” Anya said as she dodged a salvo of missiles from another of the modified Vincent Wards.
“It must be a new model because they’re flying without any wings or visible propulsion units!” Kallen said as the six enemy machines closed into melee range. Kozuki transformed her Type-21S into KnightMare mode and had her machine unsheathe its pair of Blade-Luminous katanas. The blades glowed with an eerie green energy as she swerved in to engage the lead Vincent.
The baby-blue KnightMare drew an elegant rapier blade from the scabbard at its side. The thin blade glowed with a red-black light.
“If you surrender Gino to me now, I’ll spare your life,” Evita Ernst said over the com.
“Evita?” Gino blurted out in surprise as he parried the red-black glowing blade of another of the Vincent Wards.
“GINO!” the duchess exclaimed. “I’ve come to rescue you, my love.”
“He doesn’t need rescuing, you idiot.” Kallen locked swords with Evita’s baby-blue KnightMare.
“You dare to challenge my KMF Victoria?” Evita scoffed as her machine easily blocked the swings from each of Kallen’s katanas. “Fool! You shall taste the bite of my Hadron Saber!”
“Kallen, be careful,” Gino warned. “Even as a young child, Evita Ernst was a gifted Devicer; she’s as good if not better than Suzaku was.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Kallen grumbled as Evita’s KnightMare twisted to one side and brought its rapier up under the left arm of her Type-21S. Kallen lifted her machine’s arm just in time to save it from the Hadron Saber of the KMF Victoria.
“Perfect!” Evita laughed as her Victoria did a high kick that knocked one of the Blade-Luminous katanas from the left hand of Kallen’s Shogun. The duchess whipped her machine around and thrust its rapier at the belly of the Type-21S.
“OH, NO YOU DON’T!” Kallen fired a burst from the pair of shoulder Hadrons of her Shogun.
“Pathetic,” Evita scoffed using the large Blaze Luminous shield on her machine’s right arm to deflect the volley of Hadron blasts. The KMF Victoria reached over to its left hip with its right arm and grabbed a discus which opened up revealing an MVS blade along its rim. The Victoria let the disc fly at Kallen’s mecha.
Kallen activated the ultimate-invulnerability field of her KnightMare. “Isn’t that cheating?”
“Not when you’re firing Hadrons at me,” Evita sniggered. “You can’t keep that shield up for long. It draws an enormous amount of power from your energy fillers, and when it goes down…you go down!”
Kallen looked around to assess how her teammates were doing while she tried to formulate a plan to save her own behind. Tamaki’s Bushido had lost an arm, but he managed to take down one of the Victorias. Now he was fighting a second machine and doing his best to parry and block the discus that the KMF had shot at him. Anya was holding her own against two machines simultaneously by shooting the discuses of the two KMFs with the energy discs from her gunpod. However, her Samurai had bullet holes and slash marks all over it, and she hadn’t done much damage to the two KnightMares she was fighting. Gino wasn’t fairing much better than Anya.
Kozuki watched as the MVS discus continued to strike her shield and the energy filler meter on her console continued to drop. Damn it! I can’t lower my shield or transform. If I do that, her disc will cut me to ribbons, or Evita will shoot me down with her machine’s gunpod. What do I do?
“Q-1,” a male voice called over the radio.
Kallen looked at the grilled radio speaker as if a cobra had just leapt from it. “Oh, my GOD!”
“Not quite, but thanks for the vote of confidence,” Zero replied. “Q-1, I need you to listen to me carefully and pull back from that KnightMare Frame. Understood?”
Am I hearing things? It sounds like…no, it can’t be. It must be Suzaku. “I hear you, Zero; go ahead,” Kallen responded thinking how amazing it was that the voice modulator of the Zero helmet made Suzaku sound like the real Zero.
“Professor Asplund has informed me that you’re fighting a new version of the Lancelot Club. It was an experimental model of the Z-01 built during Viceroy Cornelia’s reign over Japan. This machine is known as the Z-02 Victoria and is an eleventh-generation KnightMare Frame unit that was only in its prototype phases when Professor Asplund left.”
“Get to the damn point, Zero!” Kallen snapped at him in irritation as her energy filler meter dropped another notch. “I don’t have time for a technical readout!”
“Just like at Narita, you are as impatient as ever, Kallen,” Zero retorted with a snicker.
Narita? How would Suzaku know I was even at Narita? Kallen’s thoughts distracted her momentarily before Zero’s words broke through.
“The point is you can’t win against this KMF at close range. It was designed for urban assault and pacification not aerial dogfighting. It uses four null-gravity impellers. Knocking those out is your best bet in defeating this opponent. They are the dome-shaped structures on the KMF. There is one impeller behind each calf of the machine and one on each side of the Devicer cockpit. Knock out any two of them, and the machine will lose its maneuverability and thereby allow you to take it out easily.”
“That’s great, Zero, but what the hell am I supposed to do about this discus that’s assaulting me?” Kallen grouched at him.
He sighed slightly as if the answer should have been obvious to her. “Move out beyond fifty meters from the Victoria, and you’ll be outside the electromagnetic tether wire that holds the MVS disc to the KMF. Think of it as an invisible slash harken cable; you should be able to see the electromagnetic line on your EMS sensors.”
Kallen turned to see the blue line whipping along her active EMS scope. “Yah, I see the damn EM line.” Geez, I wonder if Lelouch schooled Suzaku in being a jerk? He’s just as smug and annoying as Lelouch was...unless? She drove out the thoughts that were trying to invade her mind. “Alright, Zero, I’m past the fifty-meter mark,” she told him as she flew her KnightMare out of range of the discus.
Evita tried to keep pace with Kallen. “Running away so soon?” the duchess taunted Kallen as her Victoria fell behind the Shogun.
“What, you can’t keep up?” Kallen shot back. “Too bad!” Kozuki unloaded a barrage of energy discs from the gunpod of her Type-21 aiming at the pair of domes that flanked the pilot’s compartment on either side.
Evita deflected the discs with the Blaze Luminous shield of her KMF and simultaneously fired a hail of autocannon rounds at the left graviton-impeller of Kallen’s Shogun. The graviton-impeller pod was riddled with sakuradite-tipped shells causing the nacelle to erupt in a burst of electrical bolts that blew off its armored cover.
“DAMN IT!” Kallen cursed as her speed was halved by the loss of one of her engines.
“That’s better,” the duchess chortled as her Victoria caught up to the Type-21S. “Now you’re mine,” Evita snickered as she let the discus of her KnightMare fly at the Shogun.
Kallen barely had time to react and used the forearm MVS harken of her KMF to deflect the MVS Disc. “I’m not defeated so easily, you little bitch!”
“Such insolence,” Evita scolded her as the discus of the Victoria flipped under the MVS harken and cut through its cable, sending the large triangular harken tumbling to the island below. Evita followed up with a burst of autocannon rounds that tore through the sensor head of Kallen’s Shogun. Her Victoria unsheathed its Hadron Saber and closed into melee range with the Type-21S easily.
“Kallen, use the radiant-heat wave of your gunpod!” Zero called out to her over the radio. Kozuki didn’t spare a moment; she twisted her machine so that her KMF’s left shoulder Hadron deflector met the blade of Evita’s Hadron Saber while she shoved the tip of her radiant-heat wave gunpod into the null-gravity dome on the right side of the pilot compartment of the Victoria. The dome melted under the intense heat of the wave and exploded.
Evita’s Hadron Saber cut through the deflector of the Shogun and chopped off the left arm of Kallen’s machine. “Not bad, Captain Kozuki, but not good enough!” The duchess laughed as she used the momentum of the exploding null-gravity dome to spin her Victoria around and bring her Hadron Saber up to cut the other arm of Kallen’s Shogun completely off in one fluid motion.
“KALLEN, GET OUT OF THERE!” Zero yelled at her over the radio as Evita used the MVS discus of her machine to chop off the legs of the Shogun.
The duchess giggled like a fiend drunk on power. “All too easy!” Evita brought down her Hadron Saber to cleave the Type-21S in two.
A brilliant red blade of pure energy blocked her weapon.
“WHAT! WHO DARES!” Evita pulled the Victoria back to see a machine that was larger than a KnightMare Frame, and certainly of no KMF design she had ever seen before, hovering via its green energy wings above her.
“I am the Knight of Zero!” Suzaku answered Evita.
“Knight of Zero…” the duchess said astounded. “That’s impossible!”
The battlerobot Suzaku flew was a deep violet in color with gold highlights. It had a human-shaped faceplate with no nose or mouth, only a pair of radiant blue eyes and a crown-like helmet structure that comprised its head. Broad shoulders held a peculiar housing at each front, one of which held a handle within it like some sort of knife sheath. The arms where plain, save for unusual symbols on the forearms near the wrists of the machine. The legs were long and slender with an armored skirt around the waist. The back of the mecha had only a small backpack-like structure with a pair of appendages from which the green energy wings emanated.
“Su...za…ku?” Kallen asked in awe of both the machine he flew and the implications of him using the old title of Knight of Zero. She snapped out of her initial shock. “Wait a damn minute! If you’re in that KMF, then who the hell is giving me orders as Zero?”
“That’s not important right now,” the Red Dragon said as she flew up in a similar battlerobot to the one Suzaku now piloted; its form was more feminine and its color scheme was mauve with pink highlights.
“Oh, how cute,” Evita said in a sarcastic tone. “You have matching KnightMares.” The duchess moved her Victoria in to attack Suzaku.
Nunnally’s image came up on Evita’s screen in front of her. “Duchess Evita Ernst, as empress of Britannia, I order you to stop this attack at once!”
Nunnally glared at the young girl with an intensity that shook Evita’s resolve. “As you wish, Empress.” The duchess stopped her advance. “Please accept my sincere apology; I had no idea you were on the Avalon.”
“I’ll accept your apology in person when you land on the Avalon.” Nunnally knew that having Evita in their company would deter any further violence.
“As you wish, Empress,” the duchess stated again obediently.
Suzaku and the Red Dragon joined the remnant of the Yamato no Orochi as they escorted the Victoria and its escort of four remaining KMFs to the Avalon.
* * *
Kallen jumped out of the cockpit of her badly damaged Type-21S and briskly made her way towards the elevator lift. I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now! she thought to herself as she rode the elevator down to the bridge of the Avalon.
The doors opened to reveal Lloyd Asplund and Cecile Croomy speaking with Zero and Nunnally.
Kozuki stormed onto the command deck and interrupted them. “Hey, would someone kindly tell me what is going on here?”
“Oh, hi, Kallen,” C.C. said as she came out of an adjacent elevator with an open box of pizza, a half-eaten slice already in her left hand.
“PIZZA GIRL!” Kallen’s brow furrowed in anger as she put her hands on her hips and barked at Zero, “What the HELL is going on here!”
“Is this how you normally address your superiors?” Zero asked her.
Superior? Kallen’s fury boiled over. She looked directly into Zero’s visor. “Could I please talk to you in private for a minute?” Kozuki grabbed Zero’s arm and dragged him to one of the small strategy rooms at the rear of the bridge and shut the door behind them.
“That was rather rude of you, Captain Kozuki,” Zero said as Kallen spun around to face him.
“TAKE IT OFF!” she commanded him.
Zero put up his hands defensively. “Pardon me?”
Her eyes welled up in frustration. “Stop with the asinine voice, and TAKE THAT DAMN MASK OFF, LELOUCH!”
“I think you’ve made a mis…” Zero started to say.
Kallen pulled out her sidearm and pointed it at him. “Lelouch, take that stupid mask off right now, or else I’ll blow it off your thick skull!”
“Well, there’s no need to get violent about this,” Zero told her nonchalantly. “If you must see my face, then so be it.” Zero reached up behind his head and unfastened his helmet.
“I can’t believe that you thought you could live it up with that green-haired skank while I believed you were dead all these years.”
Kallen looked at the floor and ceiling as she started pacing the room in anger. “I heard all the rumors about people sighting a cart driver that looked like you with that immortal tramp someplace in Australia, but OH, NO, I chose not to believe them. I heard the theories about you taking Charles’ immortality, or Pizza girl’s, and I just brushed it all off as conspiracy theories. BOY, was I WRONG!”
Tears started to trickle down her cheeks. “How could you do this to me? After everything we went through together…after I…I kissed you and told you how I felt about you.”
“Ahem,” Zero interrupted her rant.
Kallen stopped and turned to chew Lelouch out. A pair of amber eyes stared at her innocently from under a mop of raven-black hair.
“Huh?...Who the heck are you?” Kallen asked meekly.
He gave her a fragile smile. “Enoch.”
