The first reinforcements from Britannia arrived on the night of the thirtieth of July, at around half-past eleven, the heavy roar of the four engines of the three heavy-lift stratofreighters breaking the air above the Tokyo Settlement more than a whole night of revelry ever could. Eyes turned upwards as the three aircraft dropped steadily from an altitude of fifteen-thousand feet until they eventually came in to land at Fort Dunmore, formerly a Japanese Defence Force base, twenty-four miles to the direct south-east of the Settlement, across the Tokyo Bay.

Under the harsh glare of large floodlights, the three large aircraft opened their rear ramps, spilling out red loading lights on to the tarmac, before the first platoons of the 1st Battalion, 112th Glengarry Light Infantry, backpacks and rifles slung to their backs, marched out of the first stratofreighter, all dressed in the drab-grey combat uniforms of the Britannian army, while on their heads they wore the dark green glengarry bonnet of their regiment, with a red and white diced band around the rim and a black cockerel feather affixed in place.

Behind them came the reconstituted 2nd Battalion of the 119th Louisiana Regiment of Foot, dark blue kepis on their heads, followed by the 1st Battalion, 64th Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment, their heads covered by dark green berets, all of them marching out with the cocksure attitude of freshly minted soldiers, ready to act as though they were giants on Earth in their bullet-resistant body-armour and with their rifles in their hands.

To the side of the first plane, its massive engines silent, the second stratofreighter opened its door to disgorge its payload. First out was the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Corps of Engineers, their grey combat uniforms altered by the dark blue soft caps they wore on their heads to designate their regiment. Like the others, they were loaded down by the heavy backpacks and rifles slung to their backs, but also by the various technical equipment they carried to carry out their work as doctors to the military machines of the Britannian forces in Area 11, their own specialist vehicles following in their wake.

Lastly, following the engineers closely out of their own stratofreighter, came the one-hundred-and-eight Sutherland-pattern Knightmare Frames of the 17th/21st Lancers and the 56th Royal Hussars, their purple machines walking out of the bay of the stratofreighter in two lines of fifty-four machines. Currently, they were only armed with the standard issue Knightmare Frame rifles, although some would soon switch them for the heavy rocket launchers available in the Viceroy's Palace.

At a signal from their commanding officers, the machines engaged their landspinners and slowly wheeled away from the tarmac towards the row of large hangers at the side of the military base, joining the moving infantry guided by base personnel with light batons. Inside, numerous vehicles sat ready to transport them all to their destination. A fleet of armoured personnel carriers, trucks, jeeps and heavy lift lorries, all ready with their engines primed to take the new personnel to their new billet.

After their equipment was loaded, the Sutherlands locked in to place on the heavy lift lorries and the soldiers and crew were embarked on to their transports, the first of the convoys rolled out on to the roadways of the Settlement. Under a seemingly small police escort (or what one would considered small for a convoy of military vehicles transporting a third of a force of nearly two thousand bodies), the first vehicles rolled on to the central highway, bypassing all traffic lights before they rolled in to the Viceroy's Palace, guided once more by soldiers using light batons.

The plan was simple: following what was called the Castellum Protocol, the first elements of the Britannian reinforcements to Area 11 would be focused around the Viceroy and their residence, acting as a defensive bulwark against attacks that were likely to come, with the infantry acting as a shield while the Knightmares would be a quick reaction force, until the military presence was brought up to a level considered sufficient enough to conduct aggressive military actions. Although the latter would be increased by the presence of the air-mobile Warhounds.

As the second portion of the convoy was transported to the Viceroy's Palace, at the same time as the trio of planes were being refuelled for their return flight to the Homeland, to any casual and formal observers, one thing was evident: no attempt was made to disguise their arrival in Area 11, nor their movements. For who could stand against the might of the largest empire on the planet? The message to the insurgents was clear: Britannia was the true power here, and they would not be removed without a serious fight.

Walking down one of the corridors that lead to the command-and-control room of the Black Knight's makeshift headquarters, Zero strode at a leisurely pace as he passed several uniformed members of his resistance group.

The cease-fire had been a boon for his organization. With the perceived inability for Cornelia and Britannia to act against the Black Knights coupled with the disintegration of the Japanese Liberation Front, the Kyoto House had agreed to increase their support for the group. Skilled men and women, arms and equipment, all originally slated to support the JLF were instead given to Zero and his group, boosting their numbers up from a paltry two-hundred up to nearly one and a half thousand. And that was just the number of bodies that he could call up himself. He had no idea of the number of other smaller groups that the Britannians had managed to miss who would help and join his group when the time was right.

Although the arrival of reinforcements from Britannia did slightly complicate things. Lelouch had no delusion that his sister wouldn't have used the time afforded by the ceasefire idly, so the news of the new Britannian forces arrival in the country was not something that surprised him.

But there was still the one unknown element to deal with.

Walking the last bits of the corridor, the rebel leader stopped as he approached the door and its two guards. The two men were dressed in the full black uniforms of the Black Knights, their faces obscured by the purple visors all other members of the group wore, while in their hands they clutched the blocky forms of Britannian made M15 rifles. At the sight of their approaching leader, the pair snapped to attention, making the masked revolutionary stop.

"Zero, sir!" They both called out in a military cadence.

Beneath his mask, Lelouch smiled as the one of the unexpected fruits of the ceasefire came to bloom. With the lack of action on the part of both groups, the order was given for the Black Knights to step up their training regimen. Taking in some of the splintered JLF had helped in that goal, and Lelouch had seen it for himself. Men and women who would once stand in loose groups when being talked to would now stand in ordered ranks at attention when addressed, fighters who formerly fired guns blindly at the enemy nearly en masse now fired submachine guns and rifles in trained fireteams and squads. It wasn't anywhere near comparable to the Britannian army, but it was getting close.

He would have liked to have gotten them trained up more proficiently with the Knightmares, but there was no way that was realistically going to happen without drawing too much unwanted attention.

"As you were." Zero ordered, nodding his head as the pair moved to stand easy before one of them opened the door to the command-and-control room, revealing another benefit from the ceasefire.

Before, the Black Knights command-and-control room was in the two-tiered mobile home that Lelouch had 'sequestered' from a Britannian nobleman (that fact still made the teenager chuckle slightly since he didn't even need his Geass for that) which, while sufficiently mobile and relatively easy to hide, was very lacking in its ability to be used for both pitched battles, gathering information and other necessary frontline duties. So, after putting through the request to the Kyoto Houses, the Black Knights now had their own dedicated command-and-control room.

Men and women sat at large computers and radio banks, some of them typing away at intelligence reports and checking any form of electronic information they had. Radio messages, e-mails, news sites, even internet forums; all channels of information were used to try and find out what the Britannians were planning.

Although the plan wasn't so hard to discern. It was Lelouch's sister after all: the simple plan was to use overwhelming strength to beat the Black Knights and bring them under Britannia's heel, then carry on with treating the people of Japan as they did before. Although the chance of violent reprisals by the Britannians after their victory would most likely be high, and that would probably mean that the population of the island would decrease even less than the initial Britannian invasion seven years ago.

That sort of strategy was simple to defeat: build up support for the Black Knights both within and without Japan, then launch an attack on the Britannian military in the island nation that the world would take notice. Then he would continue his revenge against Britannia, dismantling that evil empire of his father's until it was nothing but ash. Then he could rebuild the world in the image he wanted for his sister.

But things were progressing at an unexpected rate, in two respects.

"Minami," He asked the purple-haired man, a black, closed folder in his hand, in charge of the C-and-C room. With the extra manpower and equipment, the bespectacled Japanese man had proven his worth at information gathering, sorting through all the various rumours and conjectures to find the true nuggets of information. "What do we have?"

"Going from reports from the news, online posts and on-sight information," Minami said, pushing his glasses up his nose as he held up a clipboard to look at. "The Second Princess has bolstered her forces substantially. Three infantry battalions, totalling one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-fifty men, two Knightmare battalions, totalling one-hundred-and-eight machines and one extra battalion, who we think are from the Royal Engineers."

"I'd say that's excessive, but this is Cornelia we are talking about…" Zero simply said, casting his gaze around the room as his comment drew some chuckles from those within earshot.

"Excessive indeed but adding the numbers that are already in the Palace, then we have to assume that the forces we're up against total somewhere over two-thousand men. We've only got roughly two-thirds of that number, let alone the disparity in Knightmare Frames."

"I am aware of that fact, Minami." The masked terrorist said flatly. "And we can almost undoubtedly expect those numbers to increase soon."

That didn't buoy any spirits in the room as all those within earshot turned their heads to look at him with looks of shock and fear. While what he told was obviously shocking news, it still had the positive effect of drawing all attention on to him.

"But," Zero said resolutely. "That does not mean we will stop our actions against the Britannian Empire. We have the help of Kyoto and the remnants of the JLF, our numbers will grow, so have no fear."

That little seemed to allay the fears that the Black Knights present had over the news as they turned back to their work, but the teenager was surprised to see Minami coming towards him with a look of concern on his face.

Deciding that it was best to hear what the man had to say, Lelouch motioned for the older Japanese man to follow him to a discreet corner, away from the ears of the others.

"What's wrong, Minami?" He asked, seeing the concern on the Japanese man's face.

"Zero, it's been two days… Watanabe hasn't returned."

Lelouch tried to rack his brain for the name. Watanabe… Watanabe… The name clicked suddenly.

"The one we sent to meet up with one of the JLF splinter groups."

Minami nodded his head. "Right. We've not been able to contact him and the members of the Liberation Front who knew the camp they had gone to can contact the camp haven't be able to get hold of them by radio."

Underneath his helmet, Lelouch arched an eyebrow. That was odd. "Have you sent men to the camp's location?"

The Japanese man nodded his head. "We did. And I have the photos they took right here."

Taking the folder in his hand and opening it, Minami took out a selection of photographs and handed them to Zero, who took them in a black gloved hand to look at them.

The scenes he saw were a complete mess: the remains of huts, arrayed in a crude semi-circle in a forest clearing. The five photos showed various degrees of the over-exaggerated destruction that Britannia was so adept at sowing. Burnt out remains of hastily built buildings and a single ruined Knightmare frame, craters littered the ground from low calibre explosive rounds, while blood and other detritus of combat fouled the ground.

It reeked so heavily of Britannia's style of attack: heavy hitting, with maximum destruction and minimum control.

"Were there any bodies?" Zero asked, turning his head to look at Minami.

"No, sir. The scout team only found… found parts of bodies, mainly a few blown off limbs. But no whole bodies."

Turning his attention back to the photos, the masked man flicked his fingers through the pieces of paper, looking at each one in turn. The lack of bodies was definitely an interesting turn, but there was something else too.

"I can't see any vehicle tracks." He noted.

The Japanese man nodded his head. "We noticed. There were marks made by the Burai, but the scouts said they were old tracks, several days old. No other Knightmares, no jeeps, no trucks. The only tracks found were tracks made by infantry, about a platoon sized force. And they were all found within the clearing, with on group of four coming from the woods. A lot of shell casings though. And there also… I wouldn't call them tracks so much as indents."

For a few seconds, Lelouch just looked at the pictures through his mask's lens. No Knightmare tracks, no vehicle tracks. Only footprints, blood, shell-casings and… indents, Minami said?

While the whole situation smacked of the usual fare of Britannian military skill, the entire situation… didn't really make sense. And he didn't like it when things didn't make sense.

"Do you think it has anything to do with those aircraft that left the Palace a few days ago?" The Japanese man asked.

Not betraying his anger at the situation, Zero handed the photos back to Minami, nodding his head as he did so. "Thank you for the information, Minami. Always appreciated. Is there anything else I need to know about?"

Taking the photos in his hand, the older Japanese man put them back in to his folder before, standing up straight, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose as his face took on a stern expression. "Uh, there is, Zero. He's here."

Arching a well-maintained eyebrow underneath his helmet, Lelouch couldn't help the smirk that came to his face. "Really now? Well, that is some good news. I'll see to him immediately, Minami. Again; thank you."

Nodding his head, the caped resistance leader turned around and strode out of the command-and-control room, leaving the Japanese man to go back to his work.

Exiting the command-and-control room and walking back down the corridor he came down, Lelouch took an alternate corridor than the one he came down through. This one took him closer to the Black Knights' motor pool, a space that was more than three-hundred metres square, letting him look out at the procession of vehicles now at his disposal.

Nearly sixty Burais, the dark green Gloucester copies from Kyoto, stood in perfect order in six close ranks, ten machines wide. All standing ready to commence any operation they were called up for. To their sides, large banks of weaponry, a mixture of Knightmare machine-guns, rifles and rocket launchers were placed in preparation for combat along with their ammunition.

In front of them and to their left-hand side, sat a bank of various vehicles: former Japanese four-wheel drive jeeps, civilian flatbed trucks, heavy-duty lorries, numerous civilian cars and the two-story mobile command centre, all sat ready to be used.

The remaining space was taken up a portion of the roughly six-hundred-and-fifty men and women were being put through their paces training, some exercising their bodies while other practised their firing drills, all performed under the watchful eyes of their JLF instructors.

Even though they had been integrated in to the Black Knights and would be expected to wear the black uniforms of the organization, Zero had graciously allowed them to still retain their old uniform while keeping them in line with the Black Knights' own dress. Drab green jackets were worn with the black visored caps and black trousers, giving the ex-military personnel a markedly simple but conspicuous appearance.

Pacing back and forth behind the rows of fighters in training, the men barked out commands as they went, extolling the men and women to move their bodies faster or concentrate on their targets better. The orders were harshly given, clipped words, but to get his fighters in to a machine that could truly be equal or superior to the war-machine of the Britannian Empire, Lelouch would do anything that he could and would do to see it done. The idea to geass them in to becoming such a force had crossed his mind, but he had decided against it. A force of free-thinking men and women was better than an army of machines.

Deciding to leave them to their business, Lelouch carried on down the corridor for a few more minutes until he reached his destination. Stopping in front of the metal door that marked his destination, the masked-man couldn't help but look up at the frame above the portal, locking his eyes on the word 'MANAGEMENT' stencilled in thick black letters. With a small start, Lelouch realised that this was the same room that he had had that annoying Captain Forsyth put in during his stay with the group. Just like that time too, two guards stood outside, dressed in their uniforms

"How is our guest faring?" Zero asked, stopping in front of the two guards.

"Not a peep, sir." The man to the left of the door replied. "We gave him some food and drink and he's been waiting patiently for you. Impressive for a Britannian."

Lelouch nodded his head in agreement, humouring the two men, also acknowledging the fact that this situation was going quite well for him.

"Well, time to introduce myself to our friend." Zero said, straightening out his jacket before straightening his back further. "Open the door."

Nodding their heads, the first guard stood to the side while the second moved forward and proceeded to open the door, filling the air with the sound of grinding metal once more. Winching at the sound, Lelouch was thankful for the two-way reflective glass of his mask as he took a step towards the portal into the room.

It was still the exact same set up as it had had when they had held Captain Forsyth prisoner, although the room had been given a thorough dusting and cleaning. It didn't make the room any less dismal than it had before, what with the windows still being boarded up for security reasons, but it was something. Not that it bothered the sole seated occupant of the room.

"Zero!" Diethard Reid said excitedly, standing up from his chair behind the desk in the room, a look of unbridled joy on his face. "It's… it's a pleasure to meet you at last."

Looking at the Britannian sceptically, Lelouch couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the man in front of him. While it was true that the Black Knights had received more than a few Britannian recruits in to their group, their number was small and the general distrust that existed among many of the Japanese members made using them in any meaningful way outside of information gathering in the Settlement untenable. All their number had gotten in to the Black Knights via an inside member. And even then, all of them were screened personally be Lelouch to make sure that they weren't members of the Britannian Army or Britannian Intelligence Agency. That process was made substantially easier through his geass, which made them reveal if they were or not. If they were, he simply had them forget the whole experience and then had them dropped off at an undisclosed location and left to go home. If they weren't, all the better for him.

Usually, many of the Britannians who joined had done so on conscientious grounds: new age liberals, who felt that the current system was wrong and needed to be replaced. Unable to do so via the more conventional means of the Britannian parliament and its elected officials, and thus grown despondent, they chose to join with the Black Knights. It was admirable, Lelouch mused.

Some were your basic malcontents or low-level criminals. Men and women who wanted to do away with the oppressive bureaucracy of Britannia in Japan and replace it with an anarchic system, allowing them to do what they pleased in the remains. Even though such people would obviously have their uses, Lelouch had to be careful in choosing the right ones. If he found the right man or woman, he would use his geass to erase any thought of wrong-doing from their mind. If they weren't the right one, he either gave them or some of the Black Knights instructions for them to be dropped off at a chosen police station. A bit of a win-win in his mind.

Diethard was a strange case however. The man had managed to contact the group, like many of the others who had joined, but unlike the others, instead of offering his usefulness to the group, the Britannian had offered something useful to offer. Something he would only offer to Zero.

"I believe that you have something for me, Mister Reid" The masked revolutionary said.

"I do, Zero, but first, allow me to say how much of an honour it is to meet you in person." The brown-haired man said. "I… I was there when you revealed yourself to the world, about murdering Prince Clovis. And at Lake Kawaguchi too."

"You were?" Lelouch asked, arcing an eyebrow underneath his helmet.

"I was." Diethard replied enthusiastically. "And… Zero, I have to say; it was glorious!"

Underneath his helmet, Lelouch couldn't help but cock an eyebrow at the man's outburst. "It was?"

The Britannian nodded his head vigorously, the large bang at the front of his head bouncing up and down recklessly. "Yes, Zero. It was… it was like a charge through the system! It was electric. To see one person, one unknown individual be the one to challenge the largest empire in history."

For another of the many times since he donned the outfit, Lelouch was thankful for the semi-reflective surface of hi mask as he let a proud smirk come to his face.

'Well, I do my best.' He said inside his head before he addressed the Britannian in front of him. "That was what I was going for, Mr Reid. But I fear that we are digressing a bit. You said you had something for me?"

A look of shame flashed over Diethard's face briefly before the man took on a more professional tone.

"Yes, that's right." He said as he reached down for something behind the desk. Looking intently, Lelouch watched as the Britannian pulled up a small leather satchel and placed it on to the desktop. "It's all in here."

"What is?" Zero asked flatly. This had better not be a trick. He thought to himself.

Snapping open the lock on the satchel, Diethard picked the satchel by the bottom corners and upended the contents on to the desk. Out of the bag slipped a small bundle of what Lelouch assumed to be photographs bound in a small brown envelop, along with a CD in its case.

Lelouch had to admit something: for the collection, that was far too grand a reveal.

"What is all this?" The masked revolutionary asked, gesturing at the detritus on the desk.

"A few days ago, several… unusual aircraft, six in total, left the Viceroy's Palace in the Settlement, and disappeared somewhere in the Yamanashi Province. Roughly four hours later, the aircraft returned to the Palace and now haven't been seen since."

The man's words lit a fire of interest in Lelouch's breast. "Mr Reid? What are you getting at?"

"I imagine that, while your own intelligence gathering is good, Britannia's censorship laws have taken a toll on what you can view. So, allow me to fill that gap."

Reaching forward, Diethard picked up the paper squares and opened the envelope, before reaching inside and pulling out a small stack of photographs. Spreading them out on the wooden surface of the desk, letting Zero see the moments in time captured on the rectangles.

Against a clear blue sky, captured at several different angles, distances and placements, was the hawk-like form of a… a helicopter gunship?

Admittedly, Lelouch couldn't believe what he was seeing, but there was no denying what he was looking at. In over a dozen photos that all showed virtually the same thing, he could clearly see a group of six, bulky, menacing looking helicopters, all painted in drab green and tan colours, leaving the Viceroy's Palace.

"I've had some people I know look at the photos," Diethard said, gesturing at the pictures in front of him, like a street magician showing his cards. "Some of them saw them flying, since that caused quite a stir in the Settlement, while some only saw the photos. They all reached the same conclusion and identified the vehicles as the Sikorsky M-24 Valkyr, an attack and transport helicopter gunship. Now retired from general service in the Britannian army, but obviously, it seems that Princess Cornelia doesn't have any compunction about bringing them back in to play."

Looking at the photos more intently, so many little synapses regarding the photos that Minami showed him snapped together in Lelouch's mind. It explained why exactly there were no tire or tread marks at the site of the skirmish: the Britannian force had been airlifted in to the field, then taken back out of the field.

'Well played, sister. Well played.' The teen mentally congratulated Cornelia. But seeing what he was facing now tipped the scales in the favour of the Black Knights.

"If I know the Second Princess' military mind," Zero said out loud, both to himself and Diethard. "She'd utilise these gunships in the typical hammer blow fashion of the Britannian army: maximum speed and maximum violence, but minimum control. Something that can be easily countered with several Knightmare frames and surface-to-air missiles."

"Brilliant, Zero!" The Britannian said gleefully. "A simple plan but brilliant in its simplicity."

Deciding that silence was the best option, Lelouch merely shrugged before he gestured at the CD. "And what's on that?"

"Oh, that's footage of the aircraft in flight." The Britannian said casually. "Shot from my own camera, I might add, so you can be assured that the footage is perfectly usable to you."

Lelouch nodded his head. Any information that could be gathered, no matter how small, would be of vital importance. Especially if his half-sister had changed the game slightly.

'No matter' He thought to himself. 'I'll still figure out a way to beat Cornelia. All tasks at hand are progressing according to plan.'

Looking across the short table, the teenage terrorist realised a small fact; he didn't know what to do with Diethard. He was an active member of the media in Area 11, and if he disappeared, questions would be raised. Would it be worth using his Geass on him? Maybe. But, after demonstrating the information gathering skills that he had shown, the sort of skills that the Britannian had shown was not something to ignore.

"Mr Reid, I have a proposition for you." Zero said smoothly. "A… test, if you will."

"Anything, Zero." Diethard said happily, a smile on his face.

"Obviously, the Black Knights is fighting against Britannia, so any Britannians who join us have to be cleared with my own security. The information you've given me here is an impressive start, but I'm sure that many of my subordinates would feel that a bit more would be needed to convince them of your intent to help us."

A flash of understanding crossed Diethard's eyes as he quickly stood up from his seat. "Of course, Zero, I understand completely! I have many avenues to get information from Viceroy Cornelia and her staff. I was the man chosen to head the broadcast the attack on Saitam… ah."

Beneath his mask, Lelouch's eyes opened wide. He had no idea that the man was that close to his sister in her organization. And to even be the one to have been the one to broadcast Lelouch's first defeat… a surge of anger welled in the teen's chest as his hands stiffened at his sides. But he knew that Zero couldn't show his anger in front of someone like Mr Reid.

"I see," He responded stiffly before he forced his voice to relax. "Still, no matter. Although knowing that you have a connection, no matter what it is, to the Viceroy and her staff does make me feel that you will complete your task excellently."

The older man's eyes lit up with delight at the mission. Or at the praise given to him, Lelouch couldn't quite tell. Not that he really cared. If Diethard Reid performed his job well, then he was in with the Black Knights. And could be a very useful asset.

"O-of course, Zero!" Diethard said happily, his face alight with joy at the premise before him. "I will not disappoint, Zero. I swear it."

Nodding his head, Lelouch said nothing else as he turned and headed out of the door. The assignment he had given to Diethard was all the motivation the Britannian would need to carry out his task. The man worshipped zero, or he worshipped the idea of Zero. It was hard to tell really with the man, but in the end, it didn't matter: Diethard was a useful road in to his half-sister's plans. He probably wouldn't be able to do anything to disrupt them, but any information he could gather on them would be second to none.

Exiting the door to the office, Lelouch waited until the door closed behind him before he turned to one of the guards.

"Mr Reid is to leave our company in the hour. Send word to Minami; I want Diethard Reid under twenty-four-hour surveillance." He said coolly. "I want to know if he enters the Viceroy's Palace, when and where he enters the Palace. If he meets any contacts outside the Palace, I want to know about it."

"Understood, Zero." The man nodded.

His orders clear, the masked revolutionary turned to the other guard. "Do you know where Kallen Kozuki is?"

"I believe that she's in the main hanger, sir."

Lelouch nodded before he turned and began walking to the large area.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

Vamanos, vamanos!

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

Vamanos, vamanos!

The sound of a heavy drum beat mixed with strong guitar riffs in a solo area of the hanger fought against the noise of the mechanics bustling and tending to their charges, along with the sound of numerous people calling out to each other, making the air in the large space almost vibrate loudly.

It made Kallen smile.

"Kent, turn that shit off!" Tamaki called out. "I can't stand that Britannian shit!"

"Hey, it's good music, all right?" The other man cried out in defence.

"It's shit!" Came the reply.

From her position in the cockpit of the rebuilt Guren Mk. II, sitting astride the pilot-seat of the Knightmare, the red-haired girl let a smile come to her face at the events playing out below her; ones that she had seen and heard happen many times before.

Sitting next to a portable music player, Kent was tinkering with one of the Black Knights many heavy weapons, nodding his head in time with the music that the device was playing. It was some Britannian band that Kallen couldn't remember the name of, but she knew that Kent liked them, and she didn't mind them that much. Neither did the other original members of the Black Knights, who just carried on with their normal tasks, which at this point was just cleaning and fixing their weapons.

Tamaki on the other hand…

"Seriously, Kent!" He yelled out irritably, standing up fully to loom over the other seated man. "I swear I'm going to smash that stupid thing if you keep playing that bullshit!"

"Tamaki, give it a rest!" Kallen called out from her perch atop of the Guren, drawing all eyes to her. "You make that threat all the time, but you never do anything with it. So just stop it."

Below, she heard Kent, Yoshida and Inoue chuckle at the chastisement Tamaki was getting from the young teenager. Kallen also saw the look of hurt that appeared on Tamaki's face.

She didn't like putting the man down. For Kallen, Tamaki had been as much a part of her life as Ohgi had been. She knew that her Britannian father had not liked the young man, at all, but because he had been friends with Naoto and her mother, he had let Tamaki spend time around the family home. Until seven years ago, of course…

"Kent, turn the music off. Or at least switch it to a proper radio station." She said sternly. "Just so we don't have to hear Tamaki going off again…"

The music quickly ceased as Kent switched off his machine. A smile of Kallen's own was mirrored by Tamaki, who promptly shot her a thumb up.

Satisfied that there was going to be no more arguing, Kallen decided to go back to the task she had been doing before.

The battle at Narita had been a success, but it had been a brutal fight. The combat against the new white Britannian Knightmare Frame and her duel against Captain… Ciaran had both taken their toll on Kallen's own Knightmare Frame. It had been lucky that the machine had survived the fall down the mountainside. It was even luckier that she had too.

So much of the Guren's exterior shell had to be repaired, but not before the internal systems had to be given a do-over. Many of the internal servos and mechanisms were just about functioning when the Guren was recovered, meaning the tech crews had to work through the entire ceasefire getting it fixed. Armour panels had to be cut away to get at the wiring and mechanisms underneath before being replaced, making the Guren look like a patch-work doll for a time.

And then there was the right arm. The fight against the white Knightmare Frame, which she found out was called the Lancelot by the Britannians, had pushed the damaged Guren further. The shot she had blocked from that weird laser gun the white Knightmare had managed to short-circuit the Radiant Wave Surger, leaving her as impotent as a new-born baby.

So much work had to be put in to get everything working again; right now, she was testing the alignment in the controls. Each tug and twist of the controls switched on several lights on a special board, the little lights flashing either green for positive, or red for negative. So far, all of the lights on the right side, the arm with the Radian Wave Surger flashed up green.

The left side however…

"Goddamnit." Kallen cursed to herself as the lights on the left of the panel flashed up green as she moved the Guren's shoulder mechanism but came up red as the mechanisms in the elbow failed to respond on time. "Hey, Tamaki!"

"Yo?" The bandana wearing man responded, looking up at Kallen.

"Talk to the engineers as soon as you can. The left elbow's not responding right. I think it's still busted."

Again, Tamaki shot the girl a thumbs up. "Got it."

"Yeah, don't forget like you always do." Kent grumbled idly as he clicked shut the receiver of the gun he was working on, placing it on the ground before picking up another one.

"I won't forget!" Tamaki yelled back, although thankfully this didn't devolve in to a shouting match with Kent like they normally did.

Letting out a sigh as she realised that there was nothing else for her to do, Kallen began the process of switching off the machine before activating the climbing winch before she was lowered to the floor. As she touched the floor, she moved to turn around and go to her quarters, so she could get changed. Instead, she nearly walked straight in to a young boy with silver hair and blue eyes.

Neither teenager yelled out as they recoiled from each other, but the looks of shock on their face was not hard to miss.

"Kallen." The silver-haired boy said apologetically, taking another step back from the red-haired girl. "I'm sorry. I wasn't looking where I was going."

"No, it's fine." Kallen responded, shaking her head. "I wasn't looking where I was going. It was my fault."

The nod that Rai gave would have been the sign that the conversation was finished and done with.

Which meant there was now nothing but awkward silence between the two. Reaching across herself, Kallen absentmindedly grabbed at her bicep, rubbing it slightly as she thought of what else she could say to Rai.

Looking at the boy again, Kallen saw that he was dressed in a black boiler-suit-esque piece of clothing, a small stylized red crane stitched to his left shoulder. Another one of Zero's attempts at cementing the Black Knights as an organized fighting force, the uniform copying the design of the Britannian Royal Tank Regiment from the previous century.

"Here to check out your Knightmare?" She asked simply, prompting a nod from Rai.

"Yeah. I was told it was ready, and I wanted to check it out." A small blush came to the silver-haired boy's face as he shyly admitted. "Although, they tried to explain what it does, but I really didn't understand all of it."

"A bit too technical for you?" Kallen asked, which drew another nod from the boy. "Don't worry. I can remember how confusing it was when I was first shown how to use a Glasgow."

She didn't mean for it to happen, but it came to her. The memory of being shown how to operate a Knightmare Frame.

It had been after Naoto had died, five years ago. She hadn't seen it happen, or even know about it until she had gotten home from a day at high school. The grief and anger that had hit Kallen had nearly shut down nearly any rational thought in her mind except for one single memory: Naoto had been killed by a Britannian Knightmare frame. Ever since that moment, she wanted to know everything about them. As a Britannian citizen (something that she did resent), she had been shown numerous bits of infotainment about the machines: how they were powered, the basics of how they were operated, and video footage of them in combat against the Chinese Federation's and the European Union's conventional armed forces.

One of those same machines had taken her brother's life. But with the way that fate worked, he had been killed while he and the other members of his resistance cell had managed to steal one of those very Knightmares, a Glasgow Knightmare frame, the most advanced machine produced at the time.

As soon as she saw that machine in the groups hideout after Ohgi and Inoue had tearfully given her the news, after she had bawled her own heart out and the tears (and the… the snot) had finally dried, two things came to her mind; one, the machine in front of her was one that commanded respect in every shape and form, and two, she had to learn how to pilot it.

Ohgi and Inoue had protested, long and loudly, against the idea. She was still a child, they had argued, that she should remain in school, as Naoto had often told her to do while he was the one who fought. But she remained stubborn through it all, refusing to budge on her stance. She wanted to, had to, learn to pilot that machine.

It took time, and it took effort, forcing Kallen to take on the false persona she had at school as the aristocrat's daughter to hide the times she spent outside of school, even as she drifted further from her friends and her mother, taking her farther than what her brother wanted her to be…

The sound of snapping fingers drew her in to the real world. Blinking quickly, she looked at Rai in front of her, a puzzled look on his face as he scrunched his silver eyebrows in confusion.

"Are you okay, Kallen?" He asked, worry in his voice. "You kind of… blanked out there."

Shaking her head softly, the teenage freedom fighter looked at the boy in front of her.

"Yeah, no, I'm fine. Just… a lot of things going on at the moment?"

"School?" Rai asked in an understanding tone, sounding like he was very much in the same boat.

For a moment, Kallen was unsure on what or how she would respond. What she was going through was… it was something she felt that someone was unable to relate to. It was a weight on her shoulders, no doubt about that, and it would do a world of good to get if off her shoulders. But was Rai the right person to tell it to?

Luckily, and probably for only a handful of times, Tamaki was her saving grace.

"Hey, Kallen!" The bandana-wearing Japanese man hollered out, as he appeared from the front of one of the Guren's legs, surprised that the girl in question was still there. "You still here? What's going-oh. Heya, Rai. What you doing here?"

"Oh, hello, Tamaki-sama," Rai responded, using the honorifics he had been told to use when speaking to senior members of the Black Knights, as he bowed his head slightly. "I was on my way to see my new Knightmare when I ran in to Kallen."

Kallen should have caught it sooner, but Rai had made a big mistake around the older man: stroking his ego. If there was one thing that you did not want to do around Tamaki, and there were a few things, it was stroke his ego.

A cocky grin came to the man's face as Tamaki look absolutely pleased with himself for no good reason. "Well," He chuckled softly. "If you need to talk to anyone about Knightmares, you come to me, all right, bud? I'm the top guy here for anything and everything about Knights."

Beside Rai, all Kallen could do in response was give the older man a deadpan look and say: "Really?"

"Did you contact the engineers about the Guren yet?" The distinctive form of Kent materialized from behind the same leg that Tamaki appeared from, his bare arms blackened with weapon grease, forcing the other man to turn and face him with an indignant expression on his face.

"I'm getting to it!" Tamaki retorted angrily, earning an eye-roll from Kallen.

Tamaki had a serious problem with being criticised, whether it was actual criticism or just imaginary by him. It always set him on edge and Tamaki on edge was… loud, to say the least. Ever since she knew him, Kallen was sure that Tamaki had ended up yelling at virtually everyone in her group at least once. The man would have probably ended up yelling at her parents too, but Tamaki respected her mother too much, while her father scared the crap out of him. His own words.

"Tamaki, calm down." Kallen said, trying to placate the older man. But it didn't work as she saw the man's hands clench in anger, and it wasn't helped as Kent kept talking.

"Seriously, man, you need to stop getting defensive for shit you forget to do." The teal-haired young man said in an exasperated tone.

"I didn't forget! She only asked me to do it like two minutes ago!" Tamaki responded loudly, his face contorting in anger.

Kent, however, was not moved. "Tamaki, when someone asks you to do something, you do it immediately. Not 'get around' to it."

Despite herself, Kallen let out a groan as she heard Tamaki give out a growl of irritation, knowing what was coming as she turned to look at Rai, an apology on her tongue before the older man went off.

"Kent, would you stop giving me shit!?" Tamaki roared, his voice rising in volume as he snarled at the man opposite him, prompting Kallen to try and edge herself and Rai away from the pair. "I'm going to get it done!"

And on and on, the pair argued back and forth, causing Kallen and Rai to switch back and forth between looking at the two men as they argued. For the red-head, it was a classic routine: Kent would end up antagonizing Tamaki over something, Tamaki would obviously take offense to it, there'd be a lot of trash-talk between the two, then Ohgi would step in to break up the fight.

But seeing Tamaki's fist bunch up like it did when Kent kept digging in to him made Kallen quickly look around before she realised: Ohgi wasn't present.

"Oh, no…" She said softly to herself.

Kent seemed to wind down in his tirade against Tamaki. "… you keep spending too much attention on the new female members, which is creepy by itself. Plus, you've been screwing up the filing, which means someone else has to do it. I mean, come on. It's not that hard! Even a monkey could-"

Kent couldn't finish the sentence as Tamaki's fist connected with the side of his face, spinning his head sideways. The look of surprise on the punched man's face was reflected on Kallen and Rai's faces, while Tamaki's was merely a look of red-faced anger.

To his credit, Kent recovered quickly, whirling his head back around to stare down Tamaki who was now sporting a satisfied smirk.

Kallen knew what was going to come next: the fists would fly, the kicks and the insults following. The… absolutely horrible, and corny and just plain dumb insults. It was always the same formula; the two would insult the other (usually Kent laying in to Tamaki first), then there'd be a half-hearted fight. It would end in a draw and the pair would go back to their strange, high school-esque relationship again.

Just waiting for the next opportunity to do the same thing again.

Idiots the pair of them.

Turning her head at the sound of approaching feet though, Kallen smiled as she saw someone with a more level head come up.

"Are you two at this again?" Ohgi called out, striding past Kallen and Rai with his patented teacher stride, as he walked towards the pair of adults ready to rumble like a pair of school children.

The image of which was further reinforced by the pair immediately dropping any pretence of wanting to fight and adopting a very hurt and very guilty expression on their faces.

Stopping in front of the pair, Ohgi crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at the two.

"Okay. Who started it this time?" The curly haired man said in a tired tone of voice.

Almost immediately, both bandana-wearing men raised a hand and pointed at the other as they simultaneously said: "He started it."

Which in turn earned a glare directed at the other before they both opened their mouths to bark a retort.

Ohgi let out a groan of exasperation at the comment.

"Really? You're both grown men! I had kids that were more well behaved than you, and I taught elementary school."

A twinge of a memory came to Kallen's mind; Ohgi in a stressed but well-fitting suit trying to control a bunch of kids from Grades 1 and 2 when she herself was in Grade 4. Even to this day, she still remembered the screaming in the fights, the tantrums and the hairpulling.

"… yeah." Kallen drawled out from behind the older man. "Your kids were real angels."

Beside her, she was sure that she heard Rai give a small snicker, while to the side, she definitely saw the others have big grins on their faces at what was happening in front of them.

Ohgi, for his part, was unflappable in his poise, his hands now on his hips, looking quite imposing in his Black Knights uniform, now fully in his teacher mode. "Nevertheless. Tamaki, Kent? You two have a responsibility as core members of the Black Knights and leaders of your own teams to act in a professional manner."

At the mention of their responsibilities, the pair of adults immediately dropped any desire to fight, either letting their arms hang at their sides or putting their hands in their pockets. The resemblance between the trio and a teacher scolding some problem students was now complete.

And it wasn't just Kallen who picked up on it.

"Aw, now this takes me back." Inoue said in a nostalgic voice as she leant back in her seat. "Just like in junior high."

A grumble escaped from Tamaki's mouth. "Don't wanna talk about it.."

"Hey yeah!" Yoshida said loudly. "Reminds of the time Tamaki got caught peeping on the girls in the locker rooms."

"What?!" Kallen couldn't help but burst out in shock, her face going red in both shock and embarrassment. She knew that Tamaki could be a bit of a perv, but that?

For a moment, the world immediately around them fell silent, no-one in their little group knowing what to say in response.

Then the dams burst.

The sound of laughter bounced off the floor and the nearby Guren as everyone, barring Kallen and Rai, absolutely lost it.

"You did what?" Inoue asked in shock, even as she laughed so loudly, her voice nearly broke. "W-when was this?"

"Oh, this was way before we met you, Naomi." Kent said, wiping a tear from his eye. "This was about second year of junior high."

"I was framed!" Tamaki said loudly, his voice cutting through the laughter. Right before the group's joy redoubled in volume.

"You say that every time, Tamaki!" Yoshida responded, a broad grin on his face.

Looking to her side, Kallen saw that the silver-haired boy at her side had no idea what to make of what was going on. And frankly, she had no idea either.

"… So… you were going to show me how to use my new Knightmare?" Rai suddenly said, which gave Kallen the perfect out.

"Yes!" She nearly shouted before she lowered her voice to a normal speaking pitch. "Just, lead the way."

As the pair turned away, Kallen distinctly heard a phrase that she really wished she hadn't heard. And from Inoue no less.

"Hey, Tamaki. You better not have installed a peep-hole in the girls bathroom while you've been here."

Putting a hand to her forehead, all Kallen could do was shake her head as she and Rai walked away from the debacle behind them, laughter still ringing in their ears.

"I'm so sorry about them Rai." She said, taking her hand away from her head. "I know you and a lot of the others look up to them. But, they're all…"

Kallen trailed off as she tried to think of what to say about her friends. She could easily say something nice, but it was hard to do so when another bout of laughter came from around the Guren, causing Tamaki to yell out to his friends to "Shut up!"

"It's all right." Rai said with a shrug. "I know what they are."

"You do?" The red-head replied, her eyes opening wide in shock that this guy could figure out something she couldn't.

"They're your family." The silver-haired teen replied as he turned to look directly in front of him. "They're loud, strange, sometimes stupid, often embarrassing… but we love them all the same."

The boy's voice took on a near nostalgic tone, one that tugged at Kallen's heartstrings. He sounded so sad, almost longing for the thing that he had just described to her. It… it worried her.

"Are you okay, Rai?" She asked the boy beside her, putting a hand on to his shoulder to make him stop and look at her.

He nodded his head. "Yeah. Just… just remembering things I'd rather forget."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

A shake of the head. "… No, I'd rather not, if that's all right."

Deciding to keep quiet, Kallen nodded her head in response, patting Rai on the shoulder before they both carried on walking to the staging area for the Knightmares.

'Family, eh?' Kallen thought to herself. How long had it been since she'd had that? Sure, it was true that she did consider Tamaki, Kent and the others to be her family. But they had become her family by starting off as friends of Naoto's, which then grew into being her family after the invasion and then even more so after Naoto's death. Her real blood family was as distant and cold as the poles it seemed; her dad was always away in Britannia on business, her step-mother was always either lounging around the house or off in the Settlement spending her new husband's money, and her mum… Kallen supressed the shudder that was coming up as she set her mind to the present.

"I heard you did well at Narita." Kallen said as she and Rai passed a group of black unformed fighters being led to a drill by an ex-JLF member in a green jacket and black trousers.

Bashfully and, she hated to admit it, adorably, Rai's cheeks reddened at the praise as he absentmindedly scratched at his nose. "I… I think I did all right. I came back alive, didn't I?"

Softly, Kallen let out a chuckle. "Yeah, that's something I remember reading in history class once. It was from a pilot in the First European War; 'You always know which ones are the good ones. They always come back'".

The chuckle quickly fell away as Kallen actually thought on the implications of those words.

"I wouldn't want to do a repeat of Narita again." She said simply after a few seconds. "Even if we won, that was just cruel."

And it was. She had originally been elated at what she had helped cause, knowing that it would work towards helping Zero capture Cornelia, and it had worked. But after the battle, after she had time to see the destruction she herself had been the cause of… it sickened her.

Britannian news was careful to downplay any military defeats it suffered, to help keep up the idea of Britannian superiority, so the news of what happened at Narita was broadcast as a 'natural disaster' that occurred during a 'military training exercise'. Although that did nothing to downplay the destruction; Several hundred tonnes of rock, earth and hyper-boiled water had been sent cascading the mountainside at a speed faster than anyone could hope to escape, tearing up trees, smashing Knightmares, vehicles and buildings with godlike impunity. Zipping down the mountainside in her Guren didn't let her see the full extent of the damage, but the news wasn't shy about showing it off. The death-toll for the landslide hitting the town had been horrendous: estimated at over five-hundred civilians dead, nearly twice that injured, with many more missing. The media had been censored and didn't show the bodies on national, and possibly international, television as a kindness, but some people on the internet weren't so kind.

Bodies that had been recovered from the landslide either came in two types: mangled, crushed corpses of soldiers and civilians, their bodies smashed in to rocks and trees before being buried under tonnes of mud, or people that had simply been buried, their bodies either stretched out as they were taken by the rushing landslide, or curled up in a near ball as they sought to escape what was coming. Neither one was pleasant to look at.

And then… then there was Shirley. It had been two days after Kallen had gone back to school after faking another 'illness'. She was about to enter the student council room, like she had done several times before, when she had been stopped by a very subdued and sombre looking Milly. Taken back by the change in the normally vibrant and playful girl, she had asked what was wrong.

And had been told news she wish she hadn't.

"Shirley's dad had nearly been killed at Narita."

"What?" Rai asked, looking at Kallen in shock.

Surprised that she had been talking out loud, Kallen looked at Rai with wide eyes. "Um, yeah. S-Shirley's dad had nearly been killed… at Narita. Apparently, he got escorted off the mountain by Britannian soldiers."

A look of paled shock came to Rai's face. "Man, that's… shit. Poor Shirley."

Kallen couldn't say anything. What could she say? She had almost, indirectly or directly, put her friend's father at risk. She had refused to be near Shirley throughout that entire day, away from anyone, claiming that she had caught a bug but didn't want to get anyone else sick. Not that she was lying: she really did feel sick for that day.

Words kept echoing in her head, words that she wished she hadn't been told.

"When you fire that first shot, you don't know who's going to die, whose children are going to be bombed, whose lives are going to be ripped apart and whose hearts are going to be broken."

When Ciaran had said those words to her, Kallen thought he was just being pompous and self-gratifying, like so many Britannians could be. But in the end… he'd been right. She had no idea of the pain and turmoil she would cause in her actions and who she would cause it to, and it was making her sick to her stomach.

"Kallen, are you okay?" Rai asked suddenly in a soft voice, bringing the girl out of her thoughts. Looking at the silver-haired boy, Kallen saw that they had moved further in to the Knightmare maintenance area of the base, past the engineering teams and technicians all at work on the fleet of Burais and wound up at the storage area. Both teens were standing in front of a large metal freight container. A royal blue colour, it was wide enough and tall enough to easily contain a kneeling Knightmare without arousing suspicion.

"No, it's fine." Kallen replied half-heartedly, really not wanting to talk about it anymore. "Let's have a look at your Knightmare and I'll tell you what you need to know."

"Got it." Rai said before he stepped towards the closed door of the container. Undoing the locking mechanism, and showing an amazing degree of strength from someone a few inches smaller than herself, Kallen watched the boy first pull then push open the large doors to reveal what lay inside.

The machine she saw kneeling inside the container was at the same time close to and distant to her own Guren; the base construction was the same, but it had a sleek, rounded torso while at its elbows, knees and shoulders, large, flat spike-like protrusions stuck out to the sides. Its head was larger than the Guren's too, having a single bulbous, orange eye in the middle of its triceratops-esque head. Looking over the combination of deep and light blue paint on the machine, Kallen nodded her head.

"We're definitely going up in the eyes of the Kyoto Group." Rai said, pre-empting her thoughts as he moved to stand next to the girl, looking at his own machine.

The Gekka Pre-Production Test Type.

With the success of the Black Knights at Narita and the results from Guren's performance in the battle, the Kyoto Group decided that it the Black Knights deserved an upgrade for the Burais. While such an idea would be a long time coming, their chosen engineer, a Professor Chawla from the Militarized Zone of India, had built a prototype model of the chosen design and had sent it under a single, but very odd, condition: their 'child' should get as much use as possible in combat situations for research.

Currently, the Gekka was unarmed. Literally. No armament had been installed on the machine during transit, leaving the machine to look very strange as it knelt in the container.

"Certainly looks impressive." Kallen conceded with a small nod of her head.

An impressed whistle preceded the sound of footsteps, making both teens turn to see who was coming up behind them. It was Inoue, who was now sporting a much more professional look on her face than she had before.

"Now that's an impressive piece of kit if I ever saw one." She said in awe, putting her hands on her hips as she stood a pace behind the pair, her eyes firmly fixed on the machine's head. Without a word of warning, Inoue suddenly spread her arms open and wrapped them around Rai's neck and shoulders, drawing him in to an awkward hug as she rested her chin on top of his head.

"Umm… I-Inoue-san?" He asked, unsure of what was going on, his look of confusion plain on his face while Kallen just looked at the scene in front of her in bemusement.

"I just want to apologise for before, Rai-kun." The indigo-haired woman said in a warm, playful voice. "I know that you guys think highly of us, but really, we need to relax now and again. You get me, right?"

Unsure of what to say, Rai simply settled for nodding his head, making the older woman smile. Although that smile quickly faded as she saw that she was the only person with a smile on her face.

"Hey, what's wrong you two?" She asked in confusion, moving away from Rai's head. "I thought you'd be happy to see the new Knightmare we got."

Sharing a look, neither teenager was sure how to broach the topic, especially to Inoue. But, in the end, Kallen decided to treat it like a plaster and just get it done with quickly.

"Inoue?" She began. "… you remember me telling you about a girl called Shirley?"

"One of your classmates, right?" The older woman replied. "Tall, ginger hair. She's a nice girl, from what I've seen and heard."

Of course Inoue knew about Shirley. She was always the one chosen to keep an eye on Kallen when the girl was outside of the ghetto.

"… her dad was at Narita."

In an instant, Inoue's face dropped in shock. "Oh… Oh, god. Kallen… I…"

"He wasn't killed." Rai added in quickly. "He was at the mountain though. He got taken off the mountain by some soldiers."

That information didn't help lessen the look of shock on Inoue's face as she processed the news. Kallen knew why. Inoue could be a hard person if you caught her in a bad mood, or were a Britannian soldier taken captive after a battle, but she wasn't an unkind person. Especially since the look of quiet shock didn't leave her face.

And Kallen knew where that was coming from. It was one thing to be able to kill a person and not know who they were; just shooting a person, either from the cockpit of a Knightmare or on the ground, not knowing about their family lives, their troubles and who they actually were. Just thinking of them as a uniform with a gun, that was the only way to see the enemy. It was dehumanizing, it was impersonal. But it was the only to kill the enemy with as little trouble.

But to know that you had nearly taken the life of someone you actually knew?

"It's… that's a horrible thing to happen," Inoue said suddenly, making both youngsters turn to look at her. "But… we didn't know. You didn't know."

Kallen looked at Inoue as the woman continued talking.

"We all knew when we joined the Black Knights, even before we were the Black Knights, that this wasn't going to be an easy road. We've all done our best to try and avoid unnecessary civilian

casualties. I think we were the only real group in Japan that could make that claim. But sometimes, the situation gets out of our hands.

"Kallen, you didn't wish for Shirley's father to be killed. I know that. From what you've said about Shirley, he seems like a good man. But… this is the path we chose." Inoue's voice became morose as she carried on speaking, sounding almost pained by what she was saying. "We might get to choose the places we fight in and when, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we get put into situations that favour us, sometimes we don't. But we don't actively try and put civilians at risk. I mean… if we did, we'd be no better than Kusakabe. Isn't that right, guys?"

Kallen's eyes widened slightly at the older woman's voice. To her ears, with how Inoue was speaking to her, it sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as the young girl.

"I get what you mean." Rai said, drawing the gazes of both females to him. "I mean… I had wanted to join with the JLF. That seemed like the noble thing to do. Until Kawaguchi at least. I… I couldn't join a group that has a man like Kusakabe in it."

At that, Kallen and Inoue nodded their heads. While what happened at Narita wasn't right, at least they hadn't done it deliberately or maliciously, like Kusakabe had done at the hotel. Using hostages and treating them like that was just… wrong on every level.

'No.' She thought to herself. 'No, it's not the same thing. Kusakabe wanted to use the hostages as a shield, a bartering tool. One that would be more valuable, in his mind, if he killed one or two of them. Zero…'

Kallen stopped her train of thought as the memory from the night where shaken, literally, from her head.

'No, I shouldn't think like that.' She thought to herself. 'If I think like that, then that's it. It's over.'

She didn't want to admit it but… Damnit, why did he have to say anything to her at all.

"Kallen?" Inoue asked in concern. "Are you all right?"

It must have shown on her face, and she was ashamed that it had. So all she could do was look away in annoyance.

Instantly, Inoue's face soured. "It's because of him, isn't it?"

The red-head turned to look at the older woman in shock as she heard her literally spit out the word. Rai looked confused as well too, looking between both girls.

"Wait? Who are we talking about here?" The silver-haired boy asked.

"Who do you think?" Inoue replied sharply, making Rai jump back slightly in shock. "That bloody Captain Forsyth."

It took a few seconds for the name to register with the young teen before his eyes opened in shock.

"The guy who came to see Kallen at school a week ago?" He said in realization. "What did he do? He seemed like an all right guy to me."

Kallen quietly blinked in shock. "He did? When you showed him in to my classroom, you looked like you were going to crap your pants."

The look of fright on his face that week was hard for her to forget, especially from someone who was famous at school for having a very good poker face.

Rai just shrugged. "He said he was a member of the Viceroy's Royal Guard. Why wouldn't I be scared? But really, he was a friendly guy. Seemed a bit strange, but nice all the same."

She tried to fight it, but Kallen couldn't help the small smile that came to her face, but she managed to play it off as a smirk. "Yeah, that's the guy."

"But why was a military officer coming to talk to you?" Rai asked.

"Because he called off the surveillance the military had on her." Inoue replied, her voice obviously torn between begrudging respect or plain incredulity.

A look of confusion crossed the boy's face as he blinked dumbly at Inoue, then looked at Kallen before he flatly said, "… well that's pretty stupid. Why did he do that?"

"God knows," The older woman said in a resigned voice. "It was probably because if Kallen was arrested again and we rescued her again, then the Britannians figured we'd probably just be driven deeper underground. So they'd trouble trying to find us."

Rai nodded his head, a thoughtful expression on his face, and Kallen couldn't help but nod along too. It was sound logic.

But part of… part of her didn't fully believe what Inoue had said.

She remembered what Ciaran had said to her that day; "General Darlton has agreed to my request to call off any surveillance that's following you."

Not 'General Darlton has ordered', but 'General Darlton has agreed to my request.'

Those weren't the words of a man who was doing a job for the military or government. Hell, even the way he had said it made it sound like Ciaran had simply… just up and asked the famous General Darlton, the spear of Princess Cornelia, a simple favour. One that the man had readily agreed to as well.

She didn't want to think of it, but… Ciaran was a nice person. He really was. Sure, the pair had fought against each other before, but at the end of that, the Briton had still spoken to her like an equal, even tried to help her with her mum.

Yes, he was annoying at times, infuriatingly dense sometimes as well, but she couldn't think of him as a malicious individual.

"Kallen?" Inoue's voice said, drawing the girl back in to the real world.

Blinking slightly, Kallen saw Inoue and Rai looking at her expectantly, along with a Black Knight trooper who she did not know.

"Huh? Sorry, I was… was thinking about my mum." She replied. "I think I might go visit her later today."

It wasn't the truth, but it was enough to get Inoue and Rai to nod their heads. The trooper said nothing.

"Oh, by the way," Rai said, pointing at the man in black. "Zero wants you. This guy will take you to him."

The trooper nodded his head at Rai's words.

"Did he say why he wanted me?" Kallen asked.

A shake of the trooper's head was her answer. "No, miss. I'm just to take you to him."

"All, right. Inoue, would you mind showing Rai how to deal with his Knightmare?"

Inoue nodded with a smile. "No problem, Kallen."

Not saying a word, the read-head walked towards the trooper, who began walking to direct her where to go.

As they walked through the Black Knight's hangar, past the numerous Burais, trucks, assorted vehicles and the crews and technicians working on them. It was a full military force, not just a simple collection of young adults with old beat-up vehicles and hand-me-down weapons and gear. The Black Knights were now a proper force to be reckoned with, and there was no way that Britannia was going to stop them now.

As the pair turned a corner, Kallen spied Zero standing statue-like in his full length cloak, another thought came to her mind.

'There's no chance that I'll leave the Black Knights. Ever.'

The single butane camp stove cast the small stone room in a low, feeble light, stretching the shadows of the room's occupants in to long, almost monstrous black shapes on the walls and ceiling. Were Lieutenant Colonel Kyoshiro Tohdoh, formerly of the Japanese Armed Forces and currently of the Japanese Liberation Front, possessed of a more childish mind, he would have likened the twisting and dancing shadows to the oni, creatures from stories that his grandmother told him when he was a child.

The dreaded yokai from legend, the reincarnated forms of vile and monstrous men, whose horrible and evil nature had corrupted their immortal souls that they were reborn as demons, tasked by the Great Lord Enma, the Ruler of Hell, to mete out suffering to the souls of the damned for all eternity. Sometimes, they would be found in the mortal world, preying on the innocent and guilty alike, robbing and devouring all they could find until a heroic figure came and slew them.

They were the sorts of stories that captivated and frightened Tohdoh as a child, but they were nothing but colourless memories that had been washed away with other childhood follies through his experiences of war. Those sorts of memories that had once titillated and entertained him had become the same colour as the room he and the last few high-ranking members of the Japanese Liberation Front now sat in.

Dressed in a plain black overcoat worn over his officer's uniform, Tohdoh kept his eyes closed as he sat crossed legged, his katana sheathed at his feet, meditating as he always did when he wished for his mind to become still in turbulent times.

And this was one of them.

"The JLF have a duty to the people to stand and fight, major-general!"

"But how can we fight against Britannia when we have lost nearly two-thirds of our ground forces and almost all of our Burai? The only competent fighting force we have left is Tohdoh and the Four Holy Swords!"

The twitch of a closed eye was the only indication that Tohdoh was listening to what was being said around him. It had been like this since the battle at Narita; the endless bickering, the arguing, the conflict between men and women who had sworn to fight alongside the other to free Japan from the oppression of the Britannian Empire. Men and women who had sworn to fight to the end, against any and all odds arrayed against them, to the bitter end for liberation.

But all the drive had gone, vanished in less than a month. All their anger that was once directed at the enemy was now beginning to focus inwards, threatening to tear the organization apart.

Letting out a low, weary sigh, the lieutenant colonel opened his eyes to take in the sight in front of him. To his sides, sitting cross-legged in a similar fashion to himself, sat the members of The Four Holy Swords; Nagisa Chiba and Ryoga Senba to his right, with Kosetsu Urabe and Shogo Asahina to his left. Assembled in front of them in a rough semi-circle, sitting in the same positions as themselves, seven other senior ranking officers, less than half of the officers ranked lieutenant and above who had survived Narita and had chosen to stay in the JLF. Seated directly in front of Tohdoh, his face cast in to minor plays of shadow by the light of the butane stove, Major-General Tatewaki Katase rested, his eyes closed, just as Tohdoh's had been, simply letting the roiling sea of emotion in the room wash over him.

"Major-General, you must have some plan for what to do?" A junior lieutenant asked, sounding like he was close to hysterics.

At the question, Katase opened his eyes to look at the officers surrounding him, the motion making the group fall in to silence before he turned and looked directly at Tohdoh.

"What do you say, Lieutenant Colonel Tohdoh?" He asked simply.

Letting out a small breath, the senior-officer thought on what he could say. Formulating plans was something he could do and do easily, but it was obvious that the major-general and the others wanted an inspirational talk, which was something he admittedly was not adept at.

"Do we have any information on the extent of Britannia's reinforcements in the Settlement now?" He asked, turning his head to look at Asahina. In response, the bespectacled lieutenant stood up and turned his head to look at the assembled officers.

"From our intelligence operatives still active in the Settlement, we have a full count of the reinforcements brought to Japan." The glasses-wearing officer said flatly, obviously taking care so as not to scare people. "All told, three battalions of infantry have landed, accompanied by two squadrons of the Royal Panzer Infantry along with one battalion of engineers."

"That's over two and a half thousand personnel!" An officer with the rank pins of a second lieutenant cried out in dismay after quickly working out the numbers. "There's no way we can match them with what we have."

Cries of dismay and anger carried through the room, each officer seeking to give voice to their thoughts on the matter. Only Tohdoh, Major-General Katase and the Four Holy Swords kept their cool amidst the sea of tumultuous emotion.

"Enough!" A middle-aged man bearing the insignia of a captain said sharply, jumping up to his feet. "This is getting us nowhere! I say, we take what Burais we have left and mount an attack on the Viceroy's Palace. We cut off the head of the snake right here and now!"

"A suicide attack on Tokyo? Are you mad?" Another officer asked in confusion.

"We are the last defenders of Japan!" The captain barked back angrily. "Would our ancestors have merely laid down and let invaders step over them and rape their land? No! The gods did not let the Mongols do so, and they will not let the Britannians do so now. Now is the time we strike!"

"Enough, Captain Yasue!" Katase suddenly called out, his deep voice easily cutting through the turmoil in the room. "We will do no such undertaking."

"But major-general-" Yasue began before the lieutenant colonel cut him off.

"Captain, Britannia is a many headed hydra. The Emperor has many children ready to take the place of Cornelia li Britannia. And that is also ignoring her own officers who would be willing and are able to step in and take her place if she falls."

Turning his head to look at the highest-ranking officer in the room, Tohdoh leant forward slightly as he continued speaking.

"Major-General Katase, you and I both know that we only have fourteen serviceable Burais, including the Burai Kai of the Four Holy Swords. To waste those resources on a suicidal attack is a fruitless endeavour." Leaning his body back upright, the tall officer looked around at the assembled officers. "After all, I'm sure we all remember the aftermath of Genbu Kururugi."

The mention of the late Prime Minister of Japan soured everyone's mood, but it had to be said. The fact that their nation had been subjugated purely because their former leader had killed himself rather than carry on with the fight was still a much-hated fact. But it proved a potent point.

"If we throw away our lives needlessly, then there is virtually nothing holding back the Britannian tide."

The idea of a Japan without any sort of defence against an encroaching and enraged Britannia, leaving an undefended child against a hungry tiger, was a sobering thought for everyone in the room.

"What about the Black Knights?" An officer to the side asked, his question directed to no-one and everyone at once.

The Black Knights… that was an issue in of itself. There were several facts at play around them: Narita had roundly broken the back of the JLF, with the group having lost the best part of their veteran fighting men and support groups, and virtually all of their tech equipment and weapons. And with the losses at Narita, the group had lost any confidence from their sole major backer, the Six Houses of Kyoto, which meant that there was no viable way for the JLF to gain recoup any of their losses. Then there was the fact that many of the survivors had lost their confidence in the leadership of the major-general and had simply left, many of them taking more of the remaining weapons and Knightmares with them, which weakened the JLF even further. The last that Tohdoh had heard was that some groups had simply splintered off to form their own groups, while others had joined with the Black Knights, leaving them the only group fighting against Britannia with any real force at arms.

Pragmatism dictated that the JLF should join up with the Black Knights, pool their resources and fight against the invaders, and Tohdoh was nothing but a pragmatic fighter. The 'Miracle' at Itsukushima showed that.

But something about joining with the Black Knights… just didn't sit right with him.

The sound of a commotion outside the door to the meeting room drew his, and everyone else's, attention, some of the officers rising to their feet at the sound.

"What is going on out there?" Katase asked, making to rise from his seat as the door burst open, revealing two soldiers in green uniforms tussling with a technician carrying some sort of device in their hands.

Instantly, Tohdoh and his officers were on alert. The man himself reached down to grab his sword, while Chiba and Asahina simultaneously reached for their sidearms as they moved to cover both the lieutenant colonel and the major-general, the tension spiking in the air.

Although that tension instantly dissipated as everyone saw that the man was simply holding a radio. Although the look of a fright and shock on his face still set Tohdoh on edge.

"Private!" Katase called out, sitting up straighter in his position. "What is the meaning of this?"

"Major-General Katase," The technician called out as he rushed in to the room, a small portable radio held in his hands. "You need to hear this."

Setting the device on to the floor, the man turned the dial for the volume round, pushing up the sound as the voice of one of the Britannian radio DJ's filled the room.

"We now go direct to the Viceroy's Palace to join the Second Princess and Viceroy of Area 11, Cornelia li Britannia, in an urgent news announcement."

As one, the collected officers began muttering in confused tones before another voice replaced the DJ's voice, the haughty voice of The Witch of Britannia.

"To all subjects of Area 11, Britannian and Number alike, I speak to you now not only as your Viceroy, but also as Lord Marshal of His Imperial Majesties' Armed Forces. A few days ago, members of the Alpha Platoon of the recently built commando unit, 332 Light Infantry Battalion, undertook a daring day-light raid on an encampment we believe to be under the command of the terrorist organization known as the Japanese Liberation Front."

Murmurs of confusion and anger filled the room but Tohdoh ignored them as he focused on the broadcast.

"Using a combination of determination and Britannia's military technology, the members of Alpha Platoon took on a force equal to their own number as well as an enemy Knightmare Frame and emerged victorious. From the after-action report given by the unit's commander, three members of the platoon were injured, although neither had life-threatening injuries, while all but two of the Japanese Liberation Front were killed in action. It is those three injured men, Privates Jonathan Casters, Carl Morrison and Corporal Andrew Jackson, who stand beside me now. It is with great honour and praise that I, Second Princess Cornelia li Britannia in the name of the Emperor and my father, Charles zi Britannia, 98th Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire, award these men the Medal of Military Merit for injuries received in the line of duty against the Empire's foes."

Tuning out the gifting of the medals in disinterest, Tohdoh turned to look at Asahina questioningly.

"Asahina, do we have any information on which groups splintered from us after Narita?"

The bespectacled officer shook his head. "I don't know, lieutenant colonel. But I'll look in to it as quick as I can."

The senior officer nodded his head in understanding as he turned back to look at the officers in the room, who had devolved in to the sort of squabbling that would be more akin to a classroom than a meeting of senior officers.

"A new unit? What the hell is our intelligence playing at?"

"They wiped out all but two of a whole group with only three men injured? That's insane!"

"They must have been using a new type of Knightmare. That's the only way to explain it."

Once more focusing on the form of Major-General Katase, Tohdoh was taken aback to see a grave look on the older man's face, his chin held in one of his hands.

"This complicates things…" Katase mumbled out gravely, the tone of his voice not filling the lieutenant colonel with confidence.

Seeming to sense that eyes were on him, the senior-most officer lifted his gaze to look at Tohdoh. Not saying a word, Katase rose to his feet before motioning for the nominal second in command to follow him. Seeing that practically all of the attention in the room, including that of the Four Holy Swords, was focused on the radio, he pushed himself off the floor before he followed Katase out of the room and in to a smaller room set off to the side.

The room he came in to was an office, the one that had originally been the office of the old scrapyard's manager. It had been cleaned recently, the original desk and chair having been removed and replaced with more suitable and more intact pieces of furniture, although some spots of dust and grime did remain, but they were inconsequential to Katase and Tohdoh as they entered the room.

"Major-General." Tohdoh said with all his professionalism, ingrained in to him through his military service and childhood, as he watched his senior officer move to stand behind the desk in front of him, his body turned to stare at a point on of the floor hidden by the desk.

"Have we fallen that far, Kyoshiro?" The older man's use of his first name took Tohdoh by surprise, his eyes widening slightly in surprise.

"Sir?"

"To hear about such an action against our own fellows in such a manner? To hear it being lauded so brazenly by that witch of a princess on the radio of all things?"

Tohdoh let out a quiet sigh at the questions. He had heard questions like that from lower ranking members, but to hear them come from his superior officer was something else entirely.

"Major-General, we can recover from this. It will take time, but-"

"Can we, Kyoshiro?" Katase asked, lifting and turning his head to look at him directly, the man's brown eyes boring in to him. "The timing was too perfect for them. We were losing our support from the Kyoto Group, and we weren't reaching the same sorts of numbers we had reached for new recruits. Include that freak landslide that hit us, there is no way we can recover from this."

That memory still rankled at Tohdoh's intellect. The Narita Mountains had been declared geologically stable ever since that mountain had been chosen as one of the many fall-back positions under the Kururugi administration, before the One Month War. The mountain was under near constant geological surveillance, just to check for such instances.

But he pushed that memory aside as he turned to a more pressing concern.

"Major-General, we've been given time. If we consolidate our remaining forces, regroup with them and-"

"And then what?" Katase interrupted again as he moved to sit down in the chair. "What shall we do? Shall we follow Captain Yasue's idea and launch a single do-or-die attack on the capital? Or do we swallow our pride and join with the Black Knights?"

Opening his mouth to reply, Tohdoh shut it again as he thought on the answer. It was a fact that after Narita, the JLF had lost a massive source of funds and material from the Kyoto Group, which was now funding the Black Knights. As such, the Front had to slowly chew through their funds while their gear was subjected to nothing but maintenance and more maintenance. They were being kept afloat by the members of the population who still supported them, but that was nowhere enough to help.

"Major-General, you know that I wouldn't suggest we join with the Black Knights." Tohdoh said resolutely. "They may have helped us fight the Britannians at Narita, but in the end, they abandoned us to our fate. How can we work alongside such a group?"

For a second, Katase looked like he was going to question the lieutenant colonel's words, but instead he simply nodded his head in agreement.

"You are correct, Kyoshiro." The older man sighed, as he leaned back in his chair, looking less like a soldier and more… like an old man. "I was approached, before Narita, by an envoy from the Chinese Federation."

At the mention of the name, despite his efforts, Tohdoh felt himself bristle. The Chinese Federation. The oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. The group had always had their eyes on Japan and her Sakuradite reserves since the discovery had first been announced all those years ago.

"What did the envoy speak of, sir?" Tohdoh asked.

"Sawazaki was wanting to speak to me." The major-general replied simply. "He wanted, again, to extend to us an invitation to join the… displaced Japanese government in exile in China, and to continue the fight to free our motherland from the Britannian oppressors."

There was no resisting the smile that came to Tohdoh's face at Katase's words. He didn't doubt that the senior officer was quoting the envoy word for word, but the disdain in his voice was clear for Tohdoh to hear.

Atsushi Sawazaki. The former chief cabinet secretary of the Kururugi administration, the man had been one of Prime Minister Kururugi's top aides before the invasion. And one of the first to abandon Japan when the Japanese government had capitulated. The speed with which the man left to the Chinese mainland had been something extraordinary, faster than any other of the politicians that managed to flee before Britannia dug her claws in to the island. Which really only lead to one conclusion, and it was something that further confirmed by the fact that envoy knew where to keep finding the JLF.

"Sawazaki is a coward and a puppet." Tohdoh said sternly. "A marionette whose strings are pulled by the Eunuchs in the Vermillion Forbidden City. To even think of allying with that man is just… I cannot even condone entertaining that idea."

Silently, Katase looked at Tohdoh from his seat, his hands not moving from their place on the armrests of his chair, before, solemnly, he nodded his head.

"I trust your wisdom, Kyoshiro. So, I have to ask; what do you suggest we do?"

Tightening his grip on the pommel of his katana, Tohdoh thought long and hard about what he could say. Optimism was not his strongest suit, the realist that he was, nor was he a defeatist either. Which left him with only one conclusion.

"We lay low." The lieutenant colonel said. "The Second Princess has forces in abundance, and I do not doubt that there will be more coming in the near future. Coupled with the fact that they now have a unit that is solely dedicated to counter-insurgency operations, and I do not doubt that the man in charge is a capable and competent commander, I believe that to do anything overt would invite out destruction.

"So we wait. We bide our time. Try and convince Kyoto that we are not spent. That we will continue the fight against the invader. We should also try and rally some of the disparate forces that have left us. Convince them that standing with us is better than standing alone against Britannia."

"And the Black Knights?" Katase asked.

"Of that… I am unsure, sir." Tohdoh answered truthfully. "I do not fully trust that man, Zero. But… I fear that if things continue as they are, we may have no choice but to join with them. One way or another."

Placing his arms in to the sleeves of his combat jacket, Ciaran pulled the woodland camouflaged garment in to place on his shoulders.

It was late morning, but the inclusion of the extra two platoons of Honorary Britannians had set things off schedule. While it did have the side effect of allowing the battalion to recuperate from their first excursion, it also meant that Ciaran was basically doing… jack shit.

It took time to get forty-eight men who were technically not up to the same standards as the rest of the battalion up to snuff. Even though the Britannians had decided to give the Japanese soldiers what had to be a basic physical training regimen, the physical fitness level of the former Pathfinders was on a whole other level. Ciaran could not help but be impressed at the sight at Sergeant Reyes running at full pelt in full gear around the training field.

It also showed him how much the Japanese were dedicated to their new role.

And then there was the education too. While all of the Honorary Britannians knew what could be considered the most basic elements of soldiering; shooting, combat manoeuvres, first-aid, even fast-rope insertion, teaching the Japanese how to operate in the Fireforce doctrine was something none of them had ever even imagined themselves doing before they met the Briton. Manoeuvres carried out by multiple platoons in sweep and clear operations with zero armour support was one thing, but small-scale combat operations with multiple gunship support was completely outside the scope of their knowledge. While it would be a small stretch, the men were basically being retaught in basic soldiering.

'It could be worse.' He thought to himself with a shrug as he put the lower edge of his jacket in to his undone trousers before tightening his belt in to place.

Three measured knocks sounded against his door.

"Come in!" He hollered out as he did up the zipper on his chest and turned to face the door.

At the command, the door opened inwards, revealing the form of Lord Guilford dressed in his full attire, a thick folder held under one arm.

"Captain." The Knight said with a nod his head. "How are you faring this morning?"

"Not too bad, My Lord." Ciaran replied with a small shrug as he finished fastening up his camouflaged jacket. "Although I finally think that this thing might be bigger than I thought."

And it was true: three platoon's worth of men along with a single aviator wing added up to nearly one hundred men (and a few women of course) under his command was already a bit of a stretch for a single officer to lead, no matter what works of fiction like Sharpe made the viewer think. There were so many things to take in to account; weapons drills, PT drills, ammunition for soldiers and aircraft, fuel for the gunships, food for the men, after-action reports. And then there was the pay! It was hard, even when he was working with veteran officers like Reynolds, Fick and even Villetta.

For a few seconds, Guilford just looked at the young man flatly before a smile broke his lips as he closed the door behind him.

"What's so funny?" Ciaran asked, a little bit perturbed by the smile on the older man's face.

"That you are beginning to learn." The Knight said, crossing his arms across his chest. "Can I ask you a question: did you honestly think that a man who has only commanded three platoons, effectively one at the most, will be able to effectively command a battalion of five platoons?"

For a few moments, the Briton said nothing as he mulled over the answer. It was true that he had technically only commanded a platoon, and that wasn't including the Purists at Narita who technically counted as a Knightmare Squadron, so to jump from those to commanding a battalion made up of five platoons was a very big leap in command structure for him.

"Do you have a solution to this, My Lord, or have you come here to mock me?" He asked, smarmily.

Not saying a word, Guilford stood slightly more stiffly, a small smile still playing at his lips.

For a few moments, Ciaran just looked at him quizzically before the man's eyes opened wide and he looked at Guilford disbelievingly.

"You are kidding me." He said flatly.

In reply, the bespectacled Knight merely broadened his smile as he shrugged. "It is only temporary, I'm afraid. It's hard to get officers to accept commissions for new 'experimental' battalions, especially good officers and especially in places like Area 11. So, for the time being, you are stuck with me."

"Oh, how will I ever manage?" Ciaran responded sarcastically, rolling his eyes before he smiled happily at the older man. "Still, it is good to know that it's you who's leading us. What will your rank be, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Normally, it'd be a major, but because of my rank as Cornelia's Knight, I have the nominal rank of colonel, so I can act as commander of the battalion until a… 'proper' officer is selected."

"And we have no idea when that will be." The young man stated flatly, turning slightly to lean against the desk in his room, rapping the knuckle of his right hand against its surface in thought, casting his eyes around the room as he did so.

It was about half the size of his room in the upper level of the Palace, with a single bed, a small desk for him to do paperwork and use his laptop on, along with the basic amenities one would expect. It was a bit Spartan, he would readily admit that, but he didn't really mind. It got the job done.

"What are you thinking, Ciaran?" Guilford asked, moving further in to the room, a look of intrigue on his face.

"How common are mixed units in the Britannian military?" The Briton asked in reply, turning his head to look at the older man.

Admittedly, he already knew the answer. The reaction that he got from Cornelia was something that he could not ignore, but he did know that her reaction would be an outlier. Ciaran knew his history: there was literally zero way that an empire the size of the Britannian Empire would be able to last if it had if it solely relied on soldiers of Britannian descent.

"Not very." Guilford answered bluntly and truthfully. "Usually, the military has only had to resort to using such units before Knightmare Frames were introduced, and that was mainly on the African continent against the Europeans. Although I guess you could call the militaries in the Areas in South America 'mixed', since they're made up of both Britannians and Numbers."

Ciaran nodded his head in understanding. "And how long ago did those Areas come under Britannian control?"

For a few seconds, Guilford let his eyes wander up as he thought on the answer to the question.

"Since the Eighteen-Hundreds, I think. So, roundabout two-hundred years."

The Briton nodded his head in agreement. He knew he was being too optimistic with his plan. Getting a group like the Britannians in Area 11 to accept Japanese soldiers fighting in the same unit as Britannians in just a day would be too much to ask.

"We're down this path now." Ciaran said stoically, tapping his knuckle against the desktop hard as he did so. "We can't turn back."

Turning his head to the side, he saw Guilford nod his head in agreement before the young man spoke up again as he nodded his head towards the folder held in the older man's arm. "So, what's in the folder?"

Reaching under his armpit, the tall man took the folder in his left hand and held it up. "A mix of stuff really. Cornelia accepted your request for giving the battalion general purpose machine guns. I believe the setup is one for every fourth man, correct?"

The young man arched an eyebrow at the Knight's words. He had absolutely zero memory of making that sort of request.

"I don't remember making that request." He said flatly.

"Yes, I know." Guilford responded, nodding his head. "But you said it would help, so we're letting you have them anyway. Although, you do need to sign these documents saying that you're accepting them as the unit commander."

Nodding his head in understanding, Ciaran held out his hand to accept the papers in question. It didn't surprise him though when, instead of one or three, he was handed a whole dozen of them.

"Ah, military bureaucracy at work." He said glibly, prompting a smile from Lord Guilford.

"For your benefit, I did manage to have them condensed down to a more manageable number."

This brought a smile from the young man as he put the sheets of paper on to his desk and took a pen out from one of his drawers.

"So, have things calmed down with you and Cornelia yet?" The Knight asked plainly, but obviously hoping that any trouble between the pair had abated.

"Well, I'm still here, aren't I?" Ciaran said, not looking up from the sheet of paper in front of him. "I think that if I seriously pissed her off, I'd definitely know about it."

Out of the corner of his eye, the young man saw Guilford shrug his head and nod sadly before he spoke up. "Yes. The Second Princess can be a bit… overenthusiastic with her… err…"

"Retribution?" The young man turned his head to look at the man beside him, keeping his face blank as he did so.

In reply, the bespectacled knight merely let a guilty look play on his face. Not saying another word, Ciaran turned back to look at the papers in front of him and continued signing his name and rank on to the bottom of the papers, just below Guilford's own signature.

Deciding to change the subject, he spoke up as he put his signature on to the last bit of paper.

"So, how are the men going in accepting the Japanese?"

"Somewhat… mixed, if you'll pardon the expression." The Knight replied. "Splitting the fire-teams up in to an even fifty-fifty split; two Britannians and two Elevens, does seem to be the best way to go about it. But the friction between the two is still there."

"And that's not just between the veterans and the newbies, I take it?" Ciaran asked, knowing the answer.

A nod from the older Britannian came in reply. "Although the men are professional enough not to let it stop their work."

Ciaran nodded his head as he clicked the pen shut and handed the papers to Guilford. "Good. I'll talk to the men as soon as I can. Is there anything else, My Lord?"

"Just one more thing, Ciaran." Guilford said, taking the papers from the young man before, tucking his right hand underneath his right armpit, he withdrew his hand and held up a notepad. A very familiar looking notepad.

The Briton's eyes opened wide as he recognised the cover of the notepad in front of him.

"Sorry I didn't return this to you sooner." The Knight said apologetically. "But you know how busy things have been and this did slip my mind. So, again, sorry that I didn't return it to you sooner."

Picking up the pad of paper, Ciaran lifted the top cover and began slowly leafing through the pages, looking at everything he had written when he had first arrived. Every difference and similarity, big or small, between his world and the one had had been transported to were noted down. Music, culture, history, everything he could think of to make some sense of the situation he had found himself in when he arrived.

He flicked through the pages, speed-reading every page until he stopped at a single page which contained only three words.

Moving his hand quickly, he tore the page out before he swiftly dumped the notepad in to the bin at the side of the desk.

"It's all right," The young man said distractedly, dredging his memories for that day. "I don't need it anymore."

"Then why did you keep that one page?"

The question stopped Ciaran dead. Looking down, he looked at the small A6 piece of paper in his hand.

Guilford continued speaking. "I mean, I know that 'invictus' means 'undefeated', which I do have to admit does kind of fit a tad."

The admission surprised Ciaran, making him turn his head to look at the Britannian.

"Really?" He asked.

A nod of the head came as a reply.

"Indeed. I mean, you went from a person who had been nearly beaten insensate to someone who was given a high rank in the same military who thought you were an enemy."

"Some people would say that I was an idiot for joining you." The young man said offhandedly, drawing a chuckle from the older man.

"Maybe so, but you didn't stay lying down. You could have chosen to get out any time you wanted, but you kept ploughing through all of the horrible shit you've been put through."

This time it was Ciaran's turn to chuckle at the normally straight-laced Knight's use of foul language, prompting a shrug and a smile from the man.

"Am I wrong though? You've suffered. We know this. But you've not been defeated." The smile was replaced with a concerned look as Guilford continued speaking. "So why would you need to be reminded to remember to be undefeated?"

Turning around, the young man leant back against the desk, one hand against the wood while one still held the piece of paper.

"Lord Guilford, answer me honestly: have there ever been days where you just… want to give up?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Ciaran saw Guilford look at him in shock.

"Not… I'm not talking about while I've been here." Ciaran clarified, shaking his head ruefully. "I mean… before I came here."

This still did nothing to help the Britannian's understanding. "Ciaran, I'm frankly shocked. I mean… I find it hard to imagine you having those sorts of thoughts."

This earned a sardonic smile from the Briton as he shook his head. "Guilford, I had so little to be thankful for. I mean… ah, I don't think I should be talking about this."

Turning away, Ciaran looked down again at the paper in his hand, letting out a sigh. He moved his hands ready to tear the paper again. The movement of a shadow to come beside him drew his attention as he saw Guilford come to stand beside him, a look of quiet worry on his face.

"Ciaran… talk to me. As a friend." The bespectacled man said softly. "I'd really prefer not to order you to tell me."

Looking up at him, the young man still felt reticent about talking to Guilford about the meaning of that piece of paper.

"Do you remember what my job was before I came here?" Ciaran asked.

For a few seconds, Guilford seemed to rack his brain to dredge up the memory. "Uh… you said you were a dishwasher, correct?"

Ciaran nodded his head. "Right. I was a dishwasher for a month, and before that, I had been unemployed for five months, employed for three months before that as a dishwasher again and was unemployed for the near entirety of the year I was out of college apart from a single month stint as a, surprise, surprise, dishwasher again. Can you see a recurring a pattern here?"

"I think I can." The Britannian said simply. "Although I have to ask-"

"Why I feel this way?" Ciaran interrupted quickly. "How could I not? I tried so hard in high school and college, where I was routinely told by my teachers and my parents that I would end up in a good career, then to end up doing five months total work? As a fucking dishwasher, no less?"

The young man felt his grip tighten against the wood behind him as he remembered how awful he felt all the times when he had worked as a dishwasher, how he felt when he had dishes stacked beside him by kitchen staff who said they weren't able to help while at the same time they simply stood around talking to other members of staff. How angry he felt all the times at himself for not being able to get the workload done quickly enough, no matter how hard he tried, forcing him to practically be the last one out of work time and time again.

"Everything else I had tried to get out; applying for any job I could find, applying for the army, anything I could, just kept failing. And I'm certain that my parents were beginning to get annoyed at how poorly I was doing. They wouldn't say anything, obviously. How could they? But I knew. I just… I just felt like shit so often that there were times I didn't want to wake up."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ciaran saw Guilford sag slightly as his head dropped forward a little, listening to what the young man was saying.

"Ciaran, I don't mean to be rude here, but I can't really empathise with what you're saying." The Knight said simply but not harshly, like he was delivering a bad prognosis. "I mean, I can understand what you're saying, but I've not been in your position, so I can't really know where you're coming from with respects to your work."

The Briton chuckled humourlessly at the comment. "How would you? You're a nobleman and I'm a nobody. Apples and oranges."

Ciaran didn't mean for it to be rude, but it was a fact. And the Britannian took it as such, nodding his head in agreement. "But where does 'Invictus' come in to this, if you don't mind me asking? I mean… I don't see how a single word can help you."

Letting out a sigh that was harsher than he meant it to, the young man shook his head. "It's not just the word, Lord Guilford. It's a poem."

Looking to his left, Ciaran was gladdened by the inquisitive look on the man's face, which meant that he wasn't disbelieving the young man's story.

"Would be willing to recite this poem for me?" The Knight asked earnestly, willing to hear the words.

Turning his head away and closing his eyes, the young man took a breath as he remembered the words. Words that had been created and published over a fully century before he was born but managed to resonate with him and ones that he knew had resonated with many, many others too.

The voice that came out from his mouth was unwavering and steady:

"Out of the night which covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

Turning his head to look at the Britannian, the young man was shocked to see an awed look on the man's face.

"Are you okay, Guilford?" Ciaran asked.

"Ciaran, don't take this the wrong way but… I did not expect that from you." The Knight said truthfully, earning an incredulous look from the young man.

"Thanks for that!" The Briton said in mock-hurt, even as a smile played at his lips.

The act in turn made the older man begin chuckling before launching in to a full belly laugh, nearly doubling over in amusement. "Ha-ha! I'm sorry, Ciaran. It's just… it's just… you were so… articulate!"

Again, Ciaran could only look at the older man in confusion. "Really? You really didn't expect me to know poetry?"

Reaching a hand up, Guilford pinched the bridge of his nose as he continued chuckling, shaking his head. "No, it's just… Ciaran, how can I say this nicely? You swear more than a sailor, there have been times where you have been… let's just say, incredibly dense. So, to hear you be so articulate in reciting poetry, and a very impressive piece of poetry at that, is… it's just funny."

For a few seconds, the young man simply just looked at Guilford in confusion as he took in what he had been told before, turning to look away with a shrug, he responded. "As long as you're not making fun of me…"

Still chuckling, Guilford reached over and put his hand on to Ciaran's shoulder, giving him a light pat. "Ciaran, the last thing I would do is make fun of you. But I can see why you've latched on to the poem."

"Really?"

A nod of the head came as a reply. "Indeed. I think the fact that you're here says it all. You've made your own choices, time and again, all of your volition. Sure, Cornelia and Darlton have given you a little prompting, but every decision that you've made has been your own choice."

"Except for coming here." The young man said flatly, earning a gentle squeeze of the shoulder from Guilford.

"I'm sure we'll find the cause for that in due time, Ciaran."

Pushing himself up from his position leaning against the desk, Guilford turned and looked fully at the young man.

"But all things in time. Our duty as officers of Britannia calls and we must obey. We have business to attend to."

Standing upright, the young man reached down and pulled his dark blue beret off of his desk before placing it on to his head, setting in the proper military fashion. "After you, My Lord."

As the pair of officers walked down one of the many corridors in the Viceroy's Palace, both handing out salutes to any of the new soldiers who were now beginning to populate the Palace along with directions for any who were lost, their minds turned to more official things.

"So, what is the plan for today, My Lord?" Ciaran asked, keeping step with the taller Britannian.

"Cornelia has scheduled a meeting with all of the senior officers at one in the afternoon, thirteen-hundred hours, so we've got a few hours to take care of the battalion in the meantime."

"Am I going to attend the meeting?"

Guilford shook his head. "Unfortunately, no. Senior-most officers only. But I'll be representing the 332 for you."

The Briton nodded his head in understanding. He knew that the commanding officers of the other regiments would be members of the Britannian aristocracy and, barring Guilford, Cornelia, Nonette and Dorothea, Ciaran had not had that great a history with Britannian aristocrats.

Although as he thought on that topic, another thought popped in to his head.

"Wait a minute." He said, stopping himself and Guilford in the process. "If you're the only one of us who's going to this meeting, then what am I doing?"

The Britannian knight looked at him blankly. "Going to a meeting."

In response, Ciaran just returned the blank look that he was being given. "Please tell me you're messing with me here, My Lord."

In an instant, Guilford's blank gaze cracked in to a smile before he continued walking, leaving a thoroughly confused young man having to jog to catch up with the taller man.

Since the Fireforce doctrine needed the commanding officers, in this case Ciaran and Villetta, to be as close at hand to their respective units for ease of time, their respective rooms were on the same level as the hangar itself, so it didn't take long for the Briton and the Britannian to reach the hangar itself.

And it wasn't a bad place to be sequestered really. The walls separating the living quarters from the main hangar were thick for protection, but they were also sound proofed, meaning that virtually any noise was cancelled out (barring the odd Knightmare being slammed in to a wall). Even with the several hundred men of 332 Battalion and the Valkyrs, along with the various Knightmares and tech support vehicles and their crews going to and fro in the large space, the young officer never really grasped the full extent of how much the space could hold.

With the inclusion of the six new battalions from the Britannian Homeland, Ciaran once again found himself nearly floored by the amount of men and equipment that he saw. Even though he had been on call during the night they arrived and thus saw all their vehicles coming in, he was still awestruck by the number of reinforcements Cornelia had received.

It was shock and awe in its simplest and most non-violent form. Although if Ciaran had to guess, it wouldn't really do much to lessen the fighting strength or resolve of the Black Knights. That would only happen when the first bullets start flying.

Weaving their way through the press of men and vehicles that now filled the hangar, Ciaran and Guilford exchanged salutes and greetings with personnel, which let the young officer get a general gist of the men he would be fighting alongside. By and large, they all struck him as professionals in the best sense of the word, but too many of the infantry seemed to follow a gung-ho attitude. The troopers of the cavalry regiments were a bit brusquer, or as brusque as they could be with a nobleman and a senior officer.

It struck Ciaran how, even though he knew that Britannia was segregated on… well, it was hard to call it 'racial lines' since he had soldiers of Hispanic, Latina and African heritage serving under him, along with Villetta. But even though there was the whole semi-nationalistic bent of seeing Britannians of any stripe being superior to non-Britannians, he could see a whole range of history in the soldiers he met.

The Glengarry Light Infantry were the ones who sent him on a nostalgia trip when he and Guilford met them. Seeing the men in their grey uniforms and their black chequered bonnets reminded him heavily of the Royal Regiment of Scotland that he had seen multiple times when he went with his family to visit extended family past the border. He had asked as a joke what their parade uniform was, only to find out that their parade uniform consisted of, as he thought, a kilt and sporran.

Considering that the young man seemed to get shit a few times for being British, the Britannians didn't like to diverge from their roots that far.

Wandering past the numerous squads and troops, another thought struck Ciaran: no officer of his own rank seemed to be older than twenty-five. He didn't doubt that the junior officers wouldn't have a problem with following his orders, but he wasn't sure how well he'd get on with the other captains, and other senior officers.

It wasn't a strong feeling, but the feeling persisted; he really was going deeper in to a strange and brave new world.

"So… Lieutenant Villetta should be with her aviators, correct?" Guilford asked, drawing Ciaran out of his thoughts.

Snapping in to the present, Ciaran saw that the pair had travelled past the majority of the reinforcements and across the runway that spanned the length of the giant hangar.

"She should be, sir." The young man nodded, looking around him. "Although in this place, and with so many new men, she could be anywhere…"

The sound of a loud and quite undignified feminine laugh interrupted Ciaran's thoughts before it led the pair to their destination, an area of the hangar that had been exclusively set aside for the Warhounds. It wasn't really that hard to spot the coaxial rotors of the Valkyrs above the tops of the various vehicles and Knightmares, the sight of the fanned-out propeller blades, their twin bubble canopies watching silently over the activity in the hangar.

Turning past an APC, Ciaran and Guilford found the source of the loud laugh. Villetta was standing, a hand over her mouth, her eyes closed as her cheeks flushed bright red while her body shook with barely constrained laughter. She was dressed in her olive drab pilot suit, although since there were no operations planned for the day, she was without her helmet or harness, so her long hair was up (and also technically down) in her ponytail and letting it hang at the front.

The source of her laughter was standing right in front of her. Before her was a short man, roughly an inch or two shorter than the young Briton, dressed in the dark blue dress uniform of the Royal Engineers, with cream trousers leading down in to a pair of polished black boots. As the pair drew closers, Ciaran saw that the man had a head of curly black hair enough to match his own when it wasn't trimmer along with a small but thick beard too.

For a moment, Ciaran couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of envy as he rubbed at his own short facial hair.

"Lieutenant Villetta, good morning." Lord Guilford said, getting the woman's attention. Turning to face the nobleman, they both saw her face turn red as she did her best to fight down the laughter that overtook her before as she stood to attention.

"L-Lord Guilford, Captain Forsyth. G-good morning to you both." She stammered out. "Sorry, I was just talking to-"

"It's good to see you again, Lord Guilford." The new officer said, surprising Ciaran with a familiar lilting accent, extending a hand which the knight quickly took. "I believe that the Middle Eastern Federation was the last time I saw you."

"Indeed, it was, Major." Guilford replied with a smile. "The siege of Doha, if I'm not mistaken."

"Right you are, My Lord. Right you are." The major said with a smile.

To his side, Ciaran couldn't help but stand there looking confused. The major's accent was nagging at him, but he couldn't place where he knew it from. Although, from the side, Guilford took his confused look for something else.

"Ah, of course, we're being rude." The knight said apologetically before motioning to the man in front of him. "Captain Forsyth, let me introduce you to Major Michael Hogan, of His Royal Majesties' Corps of Engineers. We shared our last tour together under Cornelia in against the Middle Eastern Federation before we arrived here."

"A pleasure to meet you, son." Major Hogan said, extending his own hand for the Briton to shake, as the question in his mind finally clicked.

"You're Irish, sir." Ciaran said, taking the offered hand and shaking it.

"Ah, right you are, lad, right you are." The older man said ruefully. "County Clare, to be precise. I'm what you can call… an 'expat'."

"Expat, sir?" The Briton asked.

"That can wait for another time, captain." Guilford interjected, cutting off the conversation. "Major Hogan is here to help with the ideas that you gave to Cornelia about expanding 332 Battalion's spheres of operation."

"Which is something we shall talk about later." Major Hogan said pointedly, holding up a finger. "First, I must talk with Lord Guilford about some important topics."

With that, the major placed an arm around the taller Knight's shoulder and began chatting happily about military matters that surprised Ciaran. He knew that he gotten close to Lord Guilford, but to see this man treat him so casually was astounding to see.

And then there was his interaction with Villetta. The Briton had never seen the woman laugh like she had in front of Major Hogan.

"So… what was all that about before?" He asked the tawny-skinned woman as he fell in to step beside her, the pair following Lord Guilford and the major.

At the question, Villetta's face turned several shades of red as a slightly giddy look appeared on her face.

"He… hehe," The older woman chuckled softly. "He just asked where a beautiful flower such as me had been hiding away all this time."

Okay, so that was kind of tame. "I imagine you don't get asked that all that often."

Villetta put a serious look on her face as she turned to face forward, although the blush stayed on her cheeks. "Well… not in such obvious words."

Arching an eyebrow, Ciaran felt there was more that could be said here but he decided not to press it. Female pride was not something to knock, especially when the prideful one was a member of the military.

"So how are you feeling?" Villetta asked, turning to look at the man beside her, a hint of friendly concern in her voice.

"I'm good." The young man responded in slight confusion. "Why do you ask?"

"Did you talk to Dorothea?" The older woman responded in sotto voce, making sure no-one else caught wind of their conversation. Although the ambient sound in the hangar kind of made that a bit redundant.

"No, I have not." Ciaran said a little bit irritated. He knew her concern was genuine, but it was a bit… annoying. "We were a bit busy yesterday."

"That's still beside the point." Villetta said firmly. "Come on. She's your girlfriend now. Confide in her a bit. I'm not asking you to spend the entire day talking to her. Just for a little while."

Ciaran wanted to argue against it. From the viewpoint of being a commanding officer, spending any time not with his unit, especially one that had just experienced a major change in terms of personnel, would be a serious dereliction of duty. Not a thought he really wanted to entertain.

But from the viewpoint of being… well, him… he wanted to see Dorothea again. It had only been a few days already, but he wanted to see her.

Nodding his head, Ciaran looked at Villetta as he decided on what to do. "Okay… Alpha Platoon has already gone out on mission. So, we'll give Bravo Platoon their chance. Who's their commanding officer?"

"Lieutenant Voorhees."

At mention of the name, a split-second image of the hockey-mask wearing, machete-wielding killer flashed before the young man's eyes, but he promptly shook it away.

"Voorhees, right. Let him take out Bravo Platoon. They need the practice, but don't send the Honorary Britannians out with them. They'll be too green, and that could be a liability. We'll keep them back while we give the Honorary Britannians a go over of what happened, using Alpha Platoon as the instructors for what happened. That means I can talk to Dorothea. Sound good?"

"Sounds fine to me." Villetta said with a nod of her head, transitioning quickly back in to the role of a military officer, before a sly smile came to her lips. "Nice to be kept in the loop."

Ciaran let a smile of his own crop up as the pair continued to follow the two Britannian officers to the berth of 332 Battalion.

As was expected, the area was abuzz with activity. The crews of the six Valkyrs were busy tending to their crafts; weapons were disassembled on large pieces of tarp and were in the process of being cleaned, ready for action. Ammunition in the form of large twenty-millimetre shells was being loaded in to large ammunition hoppers set underneath the pilots and co-pilots seats. Engine covers were removed as technicians went about cleaning the engines of any built-up grime and filth that could clog the engine.

In front of the gunships, the fully assembled men of the Warhounds were bustling around by platoon. As the quartet drew closer, Ciaran couldn't help but smile as he saw that many of the Japanese men were managing to jibe with the Britannian members of the battalion. He saw many of them speaking openly to others about topics he couldn't here, with several jokes being traded back and forth.

It was still hard for Ciaran to conceptualize that he was the commanding officer of over one-and-thirty men, but there he was. Dressed in the same uniform and wearing the same dark blue berets as all the rest. It felt… right to the young man. No more a sense that he would be flitting from day to day, unsure of his place in the universe. Here, was where he felt that he belonged.

To his side, Villetta must have noticed whatever look had come to Ciaran's face as she gently nudged him with her elbow.

"Time to do your job, captain." She said warmly, a smile on her face, pulling the Briton back in to the world, just in time to see Lord Guilford turn to face him.

"Captain Forsyth, have the men assemble by platoons for address. At the double, if you please." The Knight said in a clipped manner before he turned to Villetta. "Have your men fall in on the left of the line, Miss Villetta."

In response, Ciaran straightened his back, the tawny-skinned Britannian copying his stance as they both quickly saluted the man. "Sir, yes, sir!"

Striding past Lord Guilford and Major Hogan, with Villetta close behind him, the young man took a stand several paces in front of the senior officers before, sucking in a deep breath, he barked out the commands: "332 Battalion! Fall in to your platoons! At the double!"

His voice didn't have time to reverberate through the space before Villetta called out, stepping forward to stand beside the Briton; "Aviators! Fall in to the left of parade by teams! On the double!"

At the sounds of their commanding offers voices, the soldiers and aviators began quickly jogging to their positions as they grouped to form a line. Technically, 332 Battalion was still formed around a single company of soldiers, but with the addition of two platoon's worth of extra men, that stretched them past the regular three platoons to five, each split up between six sticks of four men. As the men stood to attention in front of their officers, Ciaran let his eye roam from left to right, his gaze filling with the green, brown, black and dark tan brushstrokes of their uniforms, each person standing at parade rest.

When all the personnel in their positions, Villetta turned her head to nod at the young officer. At the confirmation, Ciaran performed a perfect spin on his feet, turning to face his new commanding officer.

"All sticks accounted for, sir. The men are ready for you."

Lord Guilford nodded his thanks. "Thank you, Captain Forsyth."

At the affirmation, the young Briton nodded his head as he and Villetta moved to stand to the side of the two senior officers, all of them looking out over the battalion.

"Battalion!" Lord Guilford called out, his voice ringing out loudly. "At… ease!"

As one, the soldiers and aviators relaxed slightly where they were, although they had the sense to keep their hands behind their backs and their eyes fixed on the Britannian knight.

"Gentlemen." Guilford began. "And ladies, of course. Some of you already know who I am. To those among you who may not, I am Lord Gilbert Guilford, Second Princess Cornelia li Britannia's personal Knight and retainer. As you could have guessed from Captain Forsyth's and First Lieutenant Villetta's manners and actions, I have been given the command of 332 Light Infantry Battalion until a new and more permanent commanding officer can be found."

A brief murmur of confusion and shock rippled through the ranks, but it quietened quickly as the tall nobleman raised his hand for silence.

"As I said, this is only for the interim, a task given to me by the Second Princess herself. But, I will not think of this as a thankless task. Already, the battalion has proven the worth of itself and the Fireforce combat doctrine, so this task is one I will relish in carrying out.

"To you Britannians, you do your old regiment proud with your newfound skills and experiences. Many of you are already veterans of combat in Britannia's wars, while even the newest of your ranks have proven yourselves as capable soldiers. You know what is expected of you, and you know what to expect on the battlefield.

"However, to you Numbers, I say this to you now: This will be a hard fight. As I know already, you have all been told what your new task in this battalion will be. You will not merely be support troops nor labourers. You will be frontline soldiers. You will be right in the thick of the action, where the metal meets the meat. You will be fighting against your own countrymen with those that they consider their enemies, and yours too. But take heart; you are not fighting this fight alone. You will be among fellows, comrades in arms, friends. Look to the man beside you for support and the man in front of you for leadership. And you will come through any trials alive."

Ciaran couldn't help but nod his head at the man's words. It was a good speech. A bit… too reinforcing of the fact that the Japanese members weren't still part of the Britannian system in a meaningful way, but it at least sounded sincere from Guilford.

"As you can see behind me," The tall nobleman said, turning behind him to gesture to the engineer's officer in the blue uniform. "We have a member of the Royal Corps of Engineers with us, Major Hogan. He and his fellow engineers will be supporting us with extending the operational area of the battalion outside of the Tokyo Settlement area and to more of Area 11, so we can truly bring our enemies to justice."

"Good speech." Villetta said quietly, leaning her head down slightly so Ciaran could hear her properly.

"And now I'll let someone more used to talking to you than I speak." The Britannian nobleman said suddenly. "Captain Forsyth."

"Huh-what?"

Blinking quickly, Ciaran looked as all eyes were turned to him, soldier and officer, Britannian and Japanese alike, all looking at him expectedly. Even out of the corner of his eye, he could see Villetta looking at him hopefully.

Damn, this was not what he thought would happen.

Stepping forward, clearing his throat quietly, he first turned to look at Guilford.

"Thank you for that speech, Lord Guilford." He said amicably, even as he subtly shot the man daggers with his eyes at the unexpected turn of events. "A truly rousing performance."

Placing his hands behind his back, Ciaran turned to look at the assembled men and women before he let out a small sigh. He hated speaking in front of large groups.

"Soldiers and aviators of 332 Battalion; Warhounds!" He called out, trying to big himself up as well as the personnel in front of him. "Lord Guilford has already talked to you about the official side of things, I'll talk to you about the personal side of it.

"You are the first mixed unit to exist in Area 11, and one of the few to exist anywhere in the Britannian Empire that is a front-line combat unit. We are breaking ground here. I see Britannian mainlanders alongside the descendants of Honorary Britannians, and Honorary Britannians themselves. Nobility and commoners working together. A very unconventional unit, following an unconventional doctrine. And also working under an unconventional commander, I must admit."

Ciaran let a ripple of laughter flow through the mass as he let the small self-jab take root. But when it quietened down, he hardened his face as he continued.

"But this mixed unit will have its drawbacks in the eyes of Britannia, its people and your fellow soldiers. The majority of which will be aimed at the Honorary Britannians, I'm afraid. Sad to say, you are already seen as the near bottom rung of Britannian society, and that level of condescension will stick with you while you are with the battalion. I know that you know that you will not be accepted in to mainstream Britannian society overnight.

"But I will say this to you now: not I nor any of my fellow officers in this unit will browbeat you, belittle you or give you any of the shit you were used to in your old units." Ciaran's voice rose an octave as he felt the anger in his voice increase. "I can't speak for the manners of your fellow soldiers, but I will say this, as a promise and a warning; if I hear any soldier or officer talking about any Honorary Britannians in a derogatory manner, they are out on their arses. I will not allow infighting and division to fester among our ranks over something like birth place. That shit does not fly with me, and it clearly does not fly with Princess Cornelia and her staff. If it did, I wouldn't be standing here before you."

Stopping himself, the Briton took in a breath as he worked to calm himself down. He knew he had to keep himself calm and collected, especially in front of another senior officer.

"We are a new unit, and most of all, we are a small unit. For us to work effectively, we must have cohesion among all platoons and between every soldier. I know that on the battlefield, personal grudges do take a backseat, but I would much rather that every man work together in every aspect of the Fireforce doctrine, not just in combat. We are all dogs of war here."

Standing still, Ciaran let his eyes wander over the assembled personnel as they soaked in his words. On many faces, he could see looks of acceptance or, on the faces of the Japanese personnel, he could see looks of delight and what almost looked like reverence. It was a weird feeling for him. But looking further along though, he saw a few scattered looks of annoyance come across some of the men of Alpha Platoon's faces.

Ciaran didn't dwell on it though as he decided it was best to look good in front of Guilford and Major Hogan.

"All right now, down to business." He called out. "Since the first operation was undertaken by Alpha Platoon in the Yamanashi Province, they'll be stood down for now to rest and recuperate. Bravo Platoon, now it's your turn to get your hands dirty. Lieutenant Voorhees?"

"Sir!" A man at the front of the second platoon in line yelled out. Tawny-skinned, he had the thickset, top heavy build of a wrestler, with a heart-shaped face and a broken nose. Ciaran clocked him as a frontline combat veteran.

"Bravo Platoon will take Kanagawa Province this time. Your recon sticks have the same OP as the first run: look for any sign of enemy personnel, but do not actively look for a fight. Your main priority is to find the enemy and call the rest of the platoon in on them. If you find enemy activity, brilliant. If you find recent signs of the enemy, that's good too. Lieutenant, choose which stick you want to go on the mission and then send them to talk to Sergeant Reyes of Griffin Two-One Alpha. He'll fill you in how he and his stick carried out their mission.

"For the Honorary Britannians, you will be spending the day being tutored on how the Fireforce doctrine works in the field and how we operate. We'll also teach you anything that you weren't taught while you were in your basic training.

"Is everyone clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" All the men and women called out, even Villetta to his back calling out in response too.

Nodding his head, the young officer felt that it was a good time to call it quits on the pep talk.

"Battalion, atten-shun!" The sound of stamping feet filled the space. "Dismissed."

Slowly, the assembled men and women turned around to leave, leaving in either drips of single soldiers or drabs of sticks or groups of friends. Watching the men leave, Ciaran let his eyes linger on Alpha Platoon as they moved away. Some of them went away without a second glance, but some of the men… he wasn't overly sure, but it seemed that some of the men were angry, or at least, annoyed at what he had said.

Turning around, he began walking back to the group of officers, as words to talk to Villetta about what had happened were beginning to form on his lips. That was until he heard someone clapping their hands.

Looking around, he saw Major Hogan enthusiastically clapping his hands together as a happy grin split his face.

"Oh, good show, lad. Good show!" The officer said warmly as he stepped towards Ciaran. "That was a brilliant speech right there. Reminds me of something General Darlton would say."

"Well, the general and Captain Forsyth have spent a good amount of time together." Lord Guilford said as he walked to join the pair. "I'd say that the pair have rubbed off on one another."

The blush that came to Ciaran's face was unexpected and it embarrassed him, making him turn his head away slightly.

"Oh, don't worry about it, lad." Major Hogan said sympathetically, putting a hand on to the young officer's shoulder. "I'm not knocking you. General Darlton sent me the after-action report for the battalion's first operation, and also from what he's told me about you, you're definitely not someone to take lightly."

A small smile came to the young man's face. "Thank you, major."

"Now," The older man said, clapping his hands together. "You're probably wondering why exactly I'm here to help with your battalion."

Nodding his head, the young man opened his mouth to speak, but was quickly cut off as Hogan answered his own question.

"Well, lad," the major began as he placed a hand on Ciaran's shoulder. "It was Cornelia who contacted me, you see. She goes; "Major Hogan. I have an up and coming young officer who needs a helping hand, and I think that you're the man to help him." So I hopped on to the first transport I could to come here."

Ciaran's body sagged slightly as he looked at the older man in disbelief. "Really, sir?"

"In a roundabout way." Major Hogan replied with a shrug of his own. "But, you do have a problem, and I've been sent here to fix it. If you'd like to accompany me…"

"I need to attend the meeting I mentioned before," Guilford said as he moved away, waving a hand at the trio of officers. "But I'll catch up with you soon. Have fun, captain."

Not really knowing what to say in response, Ciaran simply turned and gave the older man a salute, the gesture copied by Villetta and Major Hogan, the nobleman returning the gesture before he turned and walked back the way the pair had come.

"Now, follow me in to my office, young man, and we'll begin talking about what needs to be done." Hogan said as he began walking forward, putting another hand on Villetta's shoulder to push her forward. "You too, my lady. You'll need to see this too."

Following the engineer, the pair of officers were led back through the slowly dispersing throng of infantry and cavalry troopers, as the battalions and squadrons finalized the transfers to their barracks and quarters, leaving the members of the Royal Corps of Engineers to fuss over their own specialist vehicles.

It was the largest of these vehicles that trio came to what was obviously the command vehicle of the group: a large and long twelve-wheeler, not unlike the vehicle that was used in the drug bust at Kitakyushu, except the rear end, which was currently open, was extendable to accommodate a Knightmare Frame for repairs. A number of mechanised arms that reminded Ciaran of servo-arms of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the thought of which made the young man chuckle lightly, hung lazily from a large scaffolding frame.

Stepping through a door in the side, the trio entered in to a spacious room that looked like a scaled down version of the bridge of the G-1. Banks of various screens and monitors lined the walls, the majority of which were turned off, leaving the roof mounted lights and the large holographic display table in the centre of the room as the only sources of light in the room. Moving his hands deftly over the controls, Major Hogan brought up a holographic map of Japan. Tokyo Central was marked a big red blip.

"So, the good Princess Cornelia asked me to help expand your operational area." The large man said as he put his hands against the rim of the table. "Just what exactly is your operational capacity?"

"The operational range of the Valkyr is four-hundred-and-fifty kilometres." Villetta stated, as she moved to a console close to where she stood. Quickly typing in a series of commands, a bubble of considerable size was cast around the island and the surrounding sea. "However, that's just not feasible for us.

"The basic approach to an attack requires the K- and G-cars to circle the enemy at several hundred feet, which burns through a lot of fuel. And then there's also the trips to and from the combat zones. Realistically, to act in a full combat capacity, we'd need to cut our operational area by half."

Typing away again, Villetta commanded the bubble to shrink, drastically decreasing the size.

"That does look like a problem." Hogan admitted.

"The Fireforce doctrine needs the infantry sticks to be ready to jump off at a moment's notice," Ciaran said, stepping in. "With only six Valkyrs carrying our full complement of soldiers, and being based in the Settlement, we are severely hamstrung in carrying out operations further afield."

Nodding his head, a sly smile came to Major Hogan's face. "I think I see what you're getting at, lad. However, there is a bit of a… limitation, to what you're proposing."

"I think I have an idea of what it is, sir." The young man said, bringing a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Time?"

"Time." Major Hogan replied, nodding his head. "My boys and girls are good at what they do, but it'll take a good few weeks to not only find the land need to support what is basically a small airfield, we'd need to flatten and clear it, build the runway, the necessary accommodations for both your soldiers and aviators, as well as the aircraft, and the necessary fuel, ammunition stores—"

"Yes, sir, I get the point." Ciaran cut in, his fingers still on the bridge of his nose, now with his eyes closed in annoyance, although not at the older officer. Taking his hand off his face, Ciaran let out a sigh. "So what can we do then?"

Major Hogan just shrugged in response. "We'll have to look for a different avenue, is all I can say."

"Or an abandoned airfield." Villetta said, still typing away at the console in front of her.

"Found something?" The Briton asked, moving to stand next to his second-in-command to see what she was doing.

It took a few seconds for image to coalesce on the screen, but what it showed was clear as day. A civilian airfield, or at least an airfield of decent size, with a long runway and several brick buildings. Ciaran doubted the image was being shown in real-time, but from the seemingly intact nature of the two hangers and the control tower situated at one side of the runway, he had to assume that it had not only weathered the invasion seven years ago well, but time and the elements had been kind to it too.

"How far is it from the Settlement?" Major Hogan asked, as he moved to stand on Villetta's other side.

"About fifty kilometres to the south-west." Villetta replied, standing up from the console, seeming quite proud with herself. "It's a pre-war civilian airfield which was confiscated from its former owner after the war before being sold at auction to some noble."

"Can we requisition it?" Ciaran asked hopefully, looking at Major Hogan. Although it was Villetta who responded.

"Don't need to. Technically, it's crown property since the noble who bought it couldn't keep up the payments and so it was repossessed. Prince Clovis just didn't do anything with it."

Ciaran smiled happily, even as he looked across at Major Hogan who was sporting a smile of his own.

"Looks like providence smiles on you, laddie." He said with a wink. "I'll send one of my officers and a few squads to go and assess the place as soon as; see if the buildings are still structurally sound, what repairs need to be made, etcetera, etcetera. But I have a good feeling for this."

"I do too, major." Ciaran said with a relieved smile.

A phone, sitting alone on a desk, began to ring. Its tinny tone filled the room for a few seconds. A gloved hand picked it up swiftly, attaching a black device to the microphone before bringing it up their head.

The voice that spoke heavily distorted through the electronic device, their natural voice shifting in pitch and tone each second, just as their voice was masked through a grating sound. "Aquila ascendant. Respond."

For a few seconds, nothing was said in reply, only the sound of the rustling of clothes and the sound of paper being moved. A beat later, the voice on the other end of the lines, as heavily disguised as the first speaker's voice was, responded.

"Uh… Canus receives." A voice strained not just by the distortion said in response. "Sorry, sir. It's hard to keep up with these new code phrases. They change a lot."

The voice on the other end of the line hummed in reply, neither in agreement or disagreement.

"Have you any more information on Target F after he survived the assassin in the Homeland?"

There was the muted sound of a person rooting around among papers on the other end of the phone before the other person replied.

"Umm… well, it's a… mixed bag. Target F seems to keeping solely to the Viceroy's Palace, although he did go out to the Settlement a few days ago with… with the Knight of Four. And then he came back with the Knight of Nine… and Princess Euphemia."

The first speaker made a surprised noise. "Well… that's… unforeseen. Although the two Knights are back in the Homeland now, so we don't need to worry about interference from them. What else? You said that Target F has been keeping solely to the Palace. What can you tell me about that?"

"Well… ahem. He's kept to the barrack areas and hanger, sticking close to the men of his battalion. That's… troublesome. The Palace's engineers can get close to do help do maintenance on their gunships, which means I can get close to him if I wanted to. But at the same time…"

The listener couldn't miss the hesitation in the second speakers voice.

"But at the same time?"

"He's surrounded by soldiers, genius." The other person replied testily. "Yeah, some of them are just Elevens, but the rest are Britannian soldiers. Trained Britannian soldiers. Special forces of some kind. It's… it's far too dangerous for me to do anything."

"Hmm. Agreed." The first speaker said. "A full battalion, plus extra, is too risky to approach by yourself. For now, stay as close to him as you can and report his movements. Specifically, I want to know if he has any contact with CC or shows any connection to C's world. Am I understood?"

Silence came from the other end of the phoneline.

"Am I. Understood. Agent Robinson." The first speaker said, using the fact that they knew the other speakers name to underline the seriousness of what they were asking.

"… yes, Agent Aquila. I understand." The person on the other end of the line responded with hesitation. "I'll keep you appraised."

A knock came from the door to the room the speaker was in.

"Lieutenant colonel?" A man's clear voice came through the door to the room. "You wanted me to inform you when the meeting was about to begin?"

"I have to go." The speaker said. "I'll contact you in a week. Aquila, out."

Before the second speaker had a chance to reply, the gadget was removed from the microphone of the phone and the handset was replaced, silencing the person on the phone.

"I'm on my way." Called out the officer as they moved towards the door.

AN: Two years. Two. Fucking. YEARS! It has taken me two years to put a new proper full length chapter for A Brave New World, and it's mainly filler! But it's good filler, I'll say that, but more on that later. But first: thank you so much to every single reader who's been clam and patient with me. You guys are great for sticking with it and for not giving me grief about it not being update in so long. It's just... you're all great.

So, to explain why it's taken so long is that... ah, fuck. I just lost my muse for a time on this story. And to be honest, work was the really serious reason behind it. I work in, for the simplest explanations since I'm contractually obligated not to name and shame and I don't want to risk getting found out through a self-insert fanfic of all things, a fairly large, discount retail chain in the UK. Who has probably one of the dumbest models for worker times ever. There is no set pattern for days you work or have off unless you specifically ask for them, and even then they grill you ten ways to Sunday about whether those days are important enough for you to have off. I was originally on an 8 hour contract, but because of the way the company works, I'd end up working 3 to 4 times that number of hours in a week, which is annoying in itself but if I got holidays off, I'd only get paid for the 8 hours I'd work.

I got an increase in contracted hours early last year up to 20 hours, which is obviously better for the money on holidays, and personally, I bloody hated doing an 8 hour week since it felt like I wasn't even working a proper job when they did give me a rota that said I was doing 8 hours a week. But then... ugh, there's too much to really say. Between a shitty company, a manager who can swing between moods something horrendous and sometimes seems to have it out for me, as well as having a Christmas period where they'd have me start work at 7 IN THE FUCKING MORNING! Even though I'm one of the people who lives the furthest away from work! It's just... bottom line, it really killed my creativity in a big way. Then on top of that, at the time when I thought I could actually get this story finished before the New Year, I got hit with a horrible tooth abscess that needed a root canal in two teeth (one of which has yet to be properly given a filling, but that's a cock up due to several people so that's neither here nor there), and also last year was just... it wasn't the best year for me in terms of mental health.

I had trouble writing... I won't say virtually anything, because I did manage to start something else which I hope to post ASAP, but I tried a few different things to try and get my writing mojo back, but nothing really helped. I couldn't paint my models, I couldn't play video games, even watching movies and reading books was a chore for me. I also got stuck at a pretty damn big part in the story (the scene with Tamaki and Kent gave me a massive fucking head-ache, so thanks to PM Fields and mrthischarmingman2 for giving me the help they did with writing it)

And now, as I'm writing this author's note, I feel... *sigh* I feel like a 200 pound monkey has been lifted off of my shoulders. Phew.

So, on to the story.

Yes, it's pretty much filler, I will agree. No action, but a fair bit of drama I think.

Firstly, this chapter was originally going to be this huge length thing that would culminate in the Battle of Port Yokosuka, but that was the problem; it would have been bloody huge! This chapter is just shy of being a full 36 pages long and really would include a fair bit more world-building really. It would have expanded on a lot more things about Ciaran, Cornelia and the Britannian Military, Kallen's relationship with Ciaran and a fair few other things. But I had to cut it as it is here, otherwise it probably wouldn't have been released until next year! So, yeah.

Secondly, I decided to actually try and have Ciaran appear as little as possible in this chapter, except, obviously for the bits at the end, just because... well, I wanted to try and step back from him for a bit and focus on some other players in the story. Lelouch, Kallen, and Tohdoh, all of whom will appear later in the story and obviously have consequences.

Kallen and Tohdoh I personally like writing as characters, since they are characters I like. They're diametrically different who want the same thing but operate in different ways to each other, as well as the way they think about things.

Lelouch... not too keen on him, but writing him was a challenge because I didn't want to restrain him to simply being a villain in the story. Also, I didn't want him to be a person who would know everything that's going on. He's clever, but he's not omnipotent. He still needs to be told information so he can learn about them and how to deal with them. If he'll succeed or not... eh, only time will tell.

There is a shoutout to a character from Sharpe, a pretty blatant one I might add. If you know who he is, no guesses there.

I also wanted to do something more with Inoue, since she's becoming a fairly standout character in my story. Obviously, from what I've shown of her so far, she's pretty ingrained in her belief for Japanese independence and following Zero, and so she's been pretty... not aggressive, but very forthright with her beliefs about the Britannian military and those who serve in it, almost borderline racist too. So I wanted to do something more laidback and calming with her. And I think it turned out fairly well.

And that's all I've got to say on this chapter, really. Apologies for taking so long with it. And thank you, again for being so patient with it.

A reminder that there is a TvTropes page for this story and also a fanfic wiki page for Ciaran too, if anyone wants to help with those.

Work is progressing on the next chapter, trust me on that.

So, thanks for reading. I hoped you all had a good New Year and I hope that the rest of 2019 is good for all of you.