[Code Geass] World Enough and Time 1 (8375words)

[shamera]

Title: World Enough and Time
Fandom: Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion
Character/Pairing(s): SuzaLulu, GinoKallen
Rating: let's put this at PG-15 for violence
Warning: AU, violence... but not more than canon, multi-chaptered
Summary: Lost Song-inspired what-if that combines the premise of the royal family with the power of Song, Lelouch and Nunnally back in the folds of the Empire, and Ragnarok having already passed but leaving the world... different.

The first thing Kozuki Kallen saw as she looked out the transport were the shifting, tumultuous grey-cast skies gathering clouds too fast for it to be natural. Wisps of darkness slithered through the clouds, barely visible yet drawing the eye like spectres weaving through the sky, making her shiver as the hairs on her skin prickled in warning.

“Cadet Stadtfeld!” A man— boy, really— greeted her with a sharp salute as the high, whining noise of the transport engine continued to grate on her ears, propulsion system blowing wisps of hair that escaped from underneath her cap into her face violently even as she made her way off with a jump, no ramp there to support her as the transport hovered an unsteady meter from the ground. Within seconds of her departure, the remaining men inside shouted at the pilot to lift off, and the plane rose up in a hurry, eager to leave before the skies decided to trap them all in the oncoming Storm.

She looked up as the small transport left, taking her only way out with them.

“Cadet Stadtfeld!” The boy called again, and this time Kallen snapped to attention, clicking her heels together and straightening her pose in a salute back, the movement smooth and trained into her after the past three months on the accelerated program of the Britannian military academy, in a class she managed to wheedle her way into thanks to her Britannian noble name.

“Yes!” She answered, eyeing him warily. Her greeter looked slightly younger than herself, no matter how tall he was, with blond hair and the bright blue eyes that were customary of Britannian nobility, although the expression on his face was softened by youth and the lingering traces of baby fat still, despite long limbs and a limberness that told of military training.

“Oh, good,” and this time the boy seemed to relax, a rueful grin slipping on his face as he gestured her forward. “I wasn’t sure if I got the wrong person, you know. There were three different transports arranged for the past hour, and I missed two, so I took a wild guess. Lucky for me, it seems!”

The words just irritated her, even as Kallen took in her surroundings. Army base tents surrounding the perimeter, transport trucks and several Knightmare Frames patrolling the area in what looked like a busy time— as it should be, the way the sky was roiling. The base was soon to be under attack at this rate, but no one looked like they were evacuating. In fact, most of the activity of hustle and bustle looked like they were gearing up, the men and women in smartly pressed uniforms hurrying to their destination with grim and determined looks on their faces.

“This way,” the boy told her, and then pressed a hand to his own chest as he walked— backwards, of all things, as if he were guiding her at a school instead of a battle zone, “I’m Gino, by the way. Gino Weinberg. You got here just in time— we’ll have to get you knighted up, or else you won’t survive this place for long.”

Kallen swallowed thickly, following him and she fidgeted with the high collar of her uniform, steps precise and even and— sinking into the mud of the ground. The feeling of it was disgusting, squishing under her wetly to suggest heavy rainfall recently. She didn’t respond to him, not having any inclination to talk to the kid, as he felt like a kid despite being a full head taller than her with the way he seemed so wide-eyed and innocent here, cheerful as if they weren’t standing at the cusp of the edge of the world.

He seemed to get the hint as she looked away, and sighed rather loudly before turning around and leading her toward a large structure that must have been where they stored Knightmares with how tall and wide the temporary building was.

As he opened the flap of flexible wall material for her, gesturing in a chivalrous manner for her to walk ahead. Kallen noted the immediate difference in both temperature and scents inside, a sense of calm falling over her immediately out of reach of those skies as the warmer atmosphere warmed her skin immediately even through the thick layers of her black military uniform.

The lights inside were extremely bright, and she shielded her eyes from the difference for a moment before taking in the view of rows and rows of Knightmare Frames— more than she had ever seen in one place outside of television broadcasts about factories.

Kallen’s breath stuttered a moment with hope. It looked enough to fight a war, and if they were extremely lucky, even win .

The uniform sound of steps on pavement coming towards them drew her attention toward a tall lady in a white lab coat with a barely buttoned shirt and black slacks, carrying a long pipe in hand as she smiled at them under a curtain of white-blonde hair hanging loose down to her waist, strangely turquoise eyes sharp despite her clearly Indian descent shaping her eyes and the bridge of her nose, framed by warm brown skin.

“Is this the new ace for my precious Guren, then?” She asked Gino, who grinned in greeting and gave an affirmation. “Ahh. We’ll have to get you suited up and Knighted soon. How many simulation hours did you clock in the Academy?”

“A hundred and forty-two, ma’am,” Kallen said, nodding in greeting. If she wasn’t going to give her name, then she had no reason to introduce herself in return. “I scored top of the Academy in every simulation battle involving KMF battle—”

The woman waved her words away, “Yes, yes. No need for that. His Highness wouldn’t take anyone but the best, after all. Come along, then, follow me.”

Gino gave her a thumbs up as Kallen looked his direction, and she only gave a nod of acknowledgement in return before stepping to follow the woman’s extremely long strides.

“Your name?” The woman asked as they walked, steps brisk as several scientists and pilots passed them by, some standard Sutherland KMFs active and testing its system, the large machines drawing Kallen’s awe.

“Karen Stadtfeld, ma’am.” Kallen informed her curtly.

“Stadtfeld.” The woman tilted her head to give her a sly smile, but didn’t comment further on the noble name. “Whatever you learned in basic about KMFs, throw it all out. You won’t be able to pilot the Guren on such drivel. None of that will prepare you for real piloting. Not until you set foot in an actual cockpit and breathe in the air of real battle.”

They passed down a hallway (and it surprised her that such a building even had a hallway no matter the size— temporary military construction tended to be one big box of a tent each time, read to be torn down and packed within an hour if necessary), where the lighting dimmed significantly, until it nearly matched the skies outside.

A pair of guards standing guard outside a door nodded to them as they approached, both holding their weapons and already prepared for combat despite how deep they were in the base, and their visors down to obstruct their features, giving them the slightly eerie appearance of statues with the way the uniform folded over their figures to make them look almost exactly the same.

The woman leading her smirked at the guards and reached for the pipe in her pocket, inserting a wad of tobacco at the end. “Is His Highness in, then?”

“The new recruit?” One of the guards asked, voice rough with old injury.

"No, a songstress." The woman waved her pipe at him as she drawled out her sarcasm. “You know it.”

With a quick glance at each other, the two guards nodded, and then moved to allow them through the door.

All this pomp, Kallen thought darkly, for people who couldn’t even be touched by the enemy. These days, no one was willing to harm or kill a member of the royal family, and all they had to do was sit back while their soldiers and knights fought and died for them. It was all a pretentious farce, but the whole world was scrambling to get into their good graces.

Even her, now.

The woman strode into the room without so much as a knock, and Kallen followed her, schooling her features into something professional and blank. As the woman stopped, so too did Kallen, folding her arms behind her back and with her feet at shoulder’s width as she straightened her posture into military precision.

There were only two people occupying the large and spartan room, sides covered with monitors that ran past information too fast for Kallen to comprehend, and the large table in the center of the room holding various files and technological devices, setting up a three dimensional map of what she could only assume was the land surrounding the base, in various colors that she didn’t yet understand the correlation to. There were no chairs or other such articles of comfort in the room, intentionally designed for work and not play.

A young woman with bright green hair and deeply piercing amber eyes was leaned up toward a young man dressed in a crisp suit of black and silver, the embroidery and filigree on the clothing marking him clearly as a member of the royal family for those who might not have seen the broadcasts of various princes and princesses on television.

Kallen, however, followed the news with due diligence for years, and recognized the sharp and unusually violet eyes before anything else, having seen all the broadcasts with the Emperor and his tyrannical and contemptuous speeches, letting them fuel her rage until her attacks were sharper, deadlier, than ever.

She hated those eyes immediately.

“Your Highness,” the woman who guided her drawled out, her lack of respect and proper court etiquette surprising Kallen. “My pilot has arrived. Seeing as the battle starts within the hour, it’d be best to knight her immediately to give her this test run first.”

“Impertinent as always, Miss Chawla,” the young man said, although with no heat in his tone. Kallen studied him intently as he straightened: tall, although nowhere near as tall as the boy who guided her before, or even the woman speaking to him now. He was as fair-skinned as the rest of the royal family, with straight black hair that made him look paler, and even the layers of expensive fabric couldn’t hide the sharp jut of his jaw and thin wrists, accompanied by delicate features and those striking, vibrant eyes.

Oh, Kallen thought with dark satisfaction, she could definitely take him in a fight.

“Well?” And this time, the woman directed her question at her. “Introduce yourself, girl.”

She ignored her own displeasure at the title, and raised her chin, “Cadet Karen Stadtfeld, Your Highness. Of the Imperial Colchester Military Academy.”

At that, the woman snorted. “What do you know. My alma mater.”

The green haired woman didn’t comment as the man— very obviously the prince, whose dossier had been tragically short in the file handed to her to read on her way here, brushed her off casually and stepped lightly around the table, his every movement elegant and refined.

A waste, Kallen thought behind the shield of her blank expression, when what the world needed right now was strength rather than the frivolous charms trained into the royal family. If they weren’t so intrinsically important to the war, then they would have died out quickly.

But as it was, the royal family were the only ones who could boast immunity to the Blight, with safety and protection offered to those who swore themselves into the family’s service. Apparently the divine right of kings, as bullshit as Kallen believed it to be, had some sort of merit in the current world. Everyone was after it, but none could manage to replicate its effects. The higher the loyalty and the longevity of service boasted the best resistance, and one that could be spread to loved ones like some magical blessing.

With Japan in shambles and the settlement she grew up in being choked by all sides by the Blight, she needed that protection. No one understood how it worked, exactly, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that it worked .

“The ace pilot,” he acknowledged, and she was displeased to note he was several inches taller than her now that he was closer. She was also displeased when her brain acknowledged him with an appreciative pretty and seemed to settle on that while he spoke. “We have quite a lot to talk of, but I’m afraid Miss Chawla is correct. I’ll stick to the basics— why are you here, Cadet Stadtfeld?”

“To serve under you, Your Highness,” Kallen said by rut, hands clenched behind her back. “To protect you and your interests, and fight in your honor. To serve as your sword and shield, and—”

He held up a hand, clearly too used to hearing this speech and looking rather displeased. For a moment, Kallen feared he would send her back and ask for another cadet, even if she decimated the scores of everyone else in her Academy. There were hundreds, thousands, working for a place under the royal family, including those who would kill just to get as far as she was now.

“No need for false sentiments.” He told her. “I meant to ask your reason for offering your services.”

She paused, looking now at the green-haired woman still behind the table, eyeing her blankly. Miss Chawla stood to the side, slowly moving to light her pipe, unheeding of the others in the room as she took a long drawl of smoke. From the bare interactions she witnessed so far, the prince didn’t much care for the usual suck-up practices that the common people had to snivel through in order to get an audience. He hadn’t much admonished Chawla for her words or attitude, so Kallen took a chance to drop the blank facade for just a moment.

“The same reason everyone else is here.” She told him bitingly. “So I can protect the people I care about.”

He smirked, and then turned his head toward the green-haired woman. “Well?”

She gave him a bland look. “That’s not my decision to make.”

He gave an exaggerated sigh at that response, but turned his attention back to Kallen and pulled an item off the top of the table, carelessly knocking several hardcover books eschew. No one in the room looked inclined to fix it as Kallen tensed at the heavy silver sword in the prince’s hand.

“Let’s do this traditionally, then,” he murmured, and then louder, said, “kneel, Cadet.”

Kallen went down to one knee eagerly, a fist to her heart and one resting against the ground in a bow as was the deferential posture for knights, although she still eyed the sword with some trepidation.

Six months ago, she never imagined herself kneeling for a member of the royal family. Britannia was the devil in her dreams, warmongering and elitist, filled with people who were complacent in the horrors of the world and who deemed themselves above all others just because of their heritage and selfish drives. The royal family was the most guilty of that.

No one anticipated the Blight and what it would do to the world.

The prince handled the sword gingerly, and slid the hand not holding it down the blade, tensing slightly as he drew blood on his thumb. Kallen had to resist the urge to flinch back as he reached for her, hesitating just a sliver of a moment before making contact with her forehead and smearing blood between her brows.

The contact was like electricity, jolting her like a sudden realization, a sudden connection to a flame she hadn’t known about before rising from deep within her. It was a darkness within, terrifying but filled with unknown power. A connection .

The so-called loyalty which allowed all knights to operate their Knightmares, whereas those not promised to a royal could steal as many Frames and power sources as they liked and still not make the machines move.

Reeling from the sudden— openness to the world, Kallen barely noticed as the prince drew back, hefting the sword up to tap against her shoulders one after another with the flat of the sharp sword, carefully and with due ceremony.

“I, Lelouch vi Britannia,” he grimaced as the green-haired woman started to laugh at him in the background, “do hereby declare thee Sir Kallen Kozuki. Rise, my Knight, and go— do everything it was you declared earlier.”

“ ‘Everything you declared earlier,’ ” the woman in the back mocked between giggles, “this is the absolute worst ceremony for a Knight of Honor I’ve ever witnessed. Shouldn’t you know all the vows by heart, Your Highness ?”

To his credit, the prince looked properly flustered at that, dropping the sword back on the table as he stepped away from Kallen. “She knew the words. That’s enough. Besides, the last time I did this was years ago, and I didn’t expect to have to repeat myself .”

Years ago? But that couldn’t be right— she saw so many other knights here, piloting Knightmares and playing soldiers. And also— she gaped. “ Knight of Honor ? But— and my name!”

“Didn’t you know the position you signed on for, girl?” the woman— Chawla— drawled and blew a breath of smoke in her direction, the tobacco making her nose itch. “I did say ace . Do you think just any regular soldier Knight get access to my babies? Guren is more special than that .”

“Miss Chawla will show you your Knightmare,” the prince said, dismissing them as he returned to the map on the table, the green-haired woman once again leaning against his side. “And I’d appreciate if we start our meeting with the truth next time, Sir Kozuki. If you are to stay a Knight of Honor, then that will be more important than you know. We’ll talk after the battle.”

 

—

 

Miss Chawla was apparently Rakshata Chawla , the ingenious and world renowned scientist working for the Black Knights. Kallen’s mind was whirling, half pleased by the acknowledgement of her skills and half angry at the supposed deception by the prince, as the woman drilled controls into her head, talking a mile a minute on regulations and methods and combination moves as she guided Kallen back towards the hanger, puffing a breath of smoke in her face whenever she thought Kallen was starting to drift away from her instructions.

“Do pay attention,” the scientist scolded, and then flicked her churchwarden pipe to the side, ashes landing randomly on the ground without care, “and just Rakshata. I’m not old enough to be Miss Chawla , no matter what His Highness claims. That boy. He does this every time to annoy me. I suppose it can’t be helped. All of you are still children, after all.”

“Yes, ma’am— ahh. Miss Rakshata.” Kallen grimaced as the woman narrowed her eyes. “Rakshata.”

The woman blew a stream of smoke into her face and Kallen coughed. “Better.”

They approached a corner of the hanger, where a team of scientists were running schematics hooked on to—

“Oh,” Kallen breathed, taking in the Knightmare, painted a bright red with gold and black accents alongside a strangely elongated silver arm, looking wicked sharp as it ended in a claw. The machine was fierce and mysterious, and suddenly all those long hours in Knightmare simulators felt like it was all leading her towards here and now.

“My baby,” Rakshata boasted proudly, “the Guren, mark-two. You’ll have less than twenty minutes to familiarize yourself on the controls before deployment. I made it specifically to differentiate itself from the rest of those factory setting machines out there, so there will be a learning curve. But if that boy could learn the in and outs of his machine within minutes, then I expect you to do the same.”

That boy—? Kallen didn’t have the time to question before Rakshata waved and one of the scientists opened the hatch in the back. “We’ll have a pilot suit ready for you next time. For now, this will be a test run. Knights have protection from the Blight, bolstered by their Knightmare Frames… I still don’t suggest evacuating the Guren in the middle of battle. You're new, after all.”

She gave a nod as Kallen climbed into the cockpit gingerly, noting that already even the seat was different from the simulations, forcing her to lean forward like a motorcycle rather than sitting back the typical Glasgows and Sutherlands, seating herself uncomfortably just as the cockpit moved forward and closed behind her, making her yelp in indignation.

Immediately the lights came on, powered through— she wasn’t certain. The machine must have sensed her presence, she though gleefully. It meant she was a real pilot now, with real protection against the Blight, and if she did well, then protection that she could offer to her family back home.

Naoto , she thought, would you be proud of me, here and now?

Rakshata’s voice was sharp on the speakerphone inside the cockpit, “Well? How does it feel, girl? Go ahead, try moving. The inhibitors are on, so you can’t blast your way out there, but we’ll be able to monitor your synchronization rates. You’ve got quite the shoes to fill and role to live up to if you want to be useful to the prince.”

She couldn’t care less about being useful to him, but the machine— the Guren— certainly made her feel lighter than air even as she tested the controls and buttons around her, letting her form settle into the strangely natural position that the seat pushed for.

“Oh, I’ll fill those shoes,” she boasted confidently as she heard Rakshata laugh outside, her voice echoing through the speakers and around her at the numbers that she was reading off her monitors, “I’ll blow them all out of the water.”

She couldn’t do any less, after all, not when she had so many people depending on her back home.

 

—

Twenty minutes was not, in fact, enough time to familiarize herself with a giant machine of war, a hundred and forty-two hours in in simulation beating the crap out of her classmates for the top score or not. But the Guren moved fluidly under her, and when the launch order came, Kallen had little problem lining up with the rest of the Knightmares, too aware of the curious eyes on her even as she switched her channel to receive commands from her current squad leader, who ended up being not a squad leader, but the boy she originally met.

“Karen, right?” The annoyingly cheerful voice filtered in through the speakers. “Guess we’ll be partners for this one! Don’t worry, you’ll be able to test the Guren out all you like, according to Rakshata! Welcome to the Black Knights.”

She frowned, unsure how to answer him, but eventually let out a reluctant and wry, “...thanks.”

“Departure imminent. Mission parameters: secure Base 0084, lure and destroy Blight Spectres. Team Orange, place charges. Team Black, secure perimeter fences. Weinberg and Kozuki, you’re on your own.”

Kallen ignored Gino’s, ‘wait, Kozuki?’ as she responded, “Acknowledged.”

The screen before her glowed dimly with the map of the surrounding area, the computer automatically selecting a route and targets for her to follow, even as she grinned wickedly at the thought of doing actual damage, finally , and proving herself as not only the best pilot out of the Academy, but out of the Black Knights as well.

Not that they were a bad group— she had been blown away by the realization that this would be the group she would be joining at first, when the transport ship first came to pick her up. The Black Knights were renown through Europia as the deadliest force that Britannia could offer, serving under the Black Prince known only as ‘Zero’ and winning every battle they were put in for the past three years since their inception.

She was both disgruntled and outraged to learn that the great Zero was nothing more than a pretty boy her age who looked soft enough to be the type who belonged more in grand halls and parties rather than out in the frey. Kallen had been expecting a grizened and battle-hardened warrior of a commander who would step into the battlefield with her and the rest of the other knights, but it seemed she would once more have to content herself with disappointment.

The blue and red form of the Tristen— Gino’s Knightmare— shot past her as they left the base, and she could hear his laugh over her speakers as all the KMF units deployed toward the Blight zone outside the base, each team with their own mission parameters to fulfill with the except of two.

The silvery machines slid on the ground, nimble despite the heavy sucking mud that attempted to slow them down as they made their way through dense, blackened forests with wood tainted with black veins. Outside, the skies were even darker despite it being midday, and Kallen could now see shapes forming in areas where the sky met the earth, darkened wisps coming down from the clouds to settle onto the mud, which writhed in turn and formed shapes— figures that it pulled from the earth, typical of the way she read about in the Academy. Of the way she had seen outside of the Settlements.

She moved, and her Knightmare moved alongside her, right hand out with its deadly claws to swipe immediately at figures as she rushed past, ignoring the squelch of mud and blood, and the knowledge that the bodies would just rise again in time, thanks to the Blight. In the distance, she could see Gino doing the same, but so much faster than her and graceful thanks to his experience.

It was fine, though. This was a test run for her. The first time. She would do better than him soon enough, and earn her place as Knight of Honor.

The Blight never settled, travelling through air and earth and water to infect whatever it touched, to spread and corrupt with its tendrils of darkness enough through stone and walls, moving and controlling indiscriminately until it encountered an organic source.

It started small, like a bruise upon the skin— a distortion or discoloration that spread and spread, like ink in water, and within a week, anyone and anything touched by the Blight was taken over if not carefully quarantined and executed. Anyone they touched with the infected areas, in turn, also became infected. It was a deadly cycle, one near impossible to catch when the Blight infected objects as well, and could spread through plants and animals still. No settlement could prevent it completely, and the past five months had been Hell on Earth as many cities implemented extreme measures of immolation to prevent its spread, only to have the Blight strike again and again like a monster from the dark.

Six months since the first appearance, and Kallen managed to twist herself into knots to become someone else, compromising all her original ideals and goals in order to shift her focus on protecting the people she loved.

She yelled out her frustration as she watched more figures form in the mud, more shadows wisping down and settling, even as the ones she just managed to slice through started to reform again. They were clearing past the small forest, and the blackened forms seemed to be following them, out into the open, and out into roads fallen into disrepair as they approached an abandoned town with sparse buildings, none larger than two stories in height. 

She twisted, pushed her new Knightmare under the gears screeched underneath her, exhilarating in the newfound power she worked so hard for in the past three months, biting her tongue on every slight and insult others threw at her in the academy, playing the role of the perfect little heiress with a fascination and blind devotion toward royalty.

Disregarding the mud getting sucked through the servos on the bottom of the Knightmare, Kallen settled herself into the fight, letting all the tension and frustration from the previous months filter through to make her movements more powerful as she reached and crushed three figures at a time, releasing the safety and pressing the button to emit a surge of radiant energy that spread like lightning arcs along the mud, dissolving everything it touched back to dust.

Gino whooped over their shared communications, and she looked over the edge of her screen to see his Knightmare— barely a blur of color as he fought several paces away from her, moving as he— was that his frame capable of transformation ? She hesitated a moment in her own movements, bewildered as she watched him transform his Knightmare from a humanoid fighting machine to something that looked like an aircraft, fluidly taking to the skies for mere seconds before he found his next target and dove like a bird of prey, transforming back to the usual Knightmare right before he hit the crumbling road, making the fall look seamless with no wasted movements as he drew a long sword and spun in an arc to take out a dozen of the mud figures at a time.

“Over here, Kozuki!” Gino called out cheerfully, his Knightmare waving her over in an imitation of his own movements, “Let’s not get in the way of everyone else, now. They’ve got an actual mission to pull off. We’re just here as distractions and to test you out in the field— not bad, by the way! You’re fast. Very aggressive fighting style. Close range. Think you could spare some time for me in the training rooms later? I’d love to gauge my own style against yours—”

She ignored him as he went on, only joining him away from the other Knightmares on the field, gritting her teeth as she realized that her movements were nowhere as fast as his despite being able to match her own simulation speeds. She wasn’t any slower than normal, he was just that much faster than her, and it grated. They made their way deeper into the town, the creatures of mud and shadow slinking along behind them, attracted to the movements and the violence as Gino and Kallen made short work of the forming figures, even if they would slowly rebuild themselves again after each cut and slice, slowly joined by more that came in from the forests as well. 

They kept moving, sliding from one street to another, Gino's speed and easy transformation between a land and flying unit luring in more and more creatures as Kallen exhausted her rage in the never-ending fight to keep the Blight Spectres down, testing each system as she went and refusing to question even in the safety of her own mind, why they were doing this. It was to fight back, after all. It was to show that they could, even if the spectres continued to reform without end. 

Another minute into her one-sided competition as she tested out each system, the comms overhead flared to life again.

“Team Orange, charges set. Retreating to rendezvous location set by Team Black. Weinberg?”

“Almost done here!” Gino’s voice called out over communications. “Kozuki’s a fighter! We ought to have this place cleared out enough in no time. ETA?”

“Three minutes and counting. His Highness is on his way.”

“Acknowledged. We’ll be done and out of here with plenty of time to spare, but just in case, you can tell Prince Lelouch that there’s no rush.”

“You can tell him that yourself,” the voice said, amused, before the line was cut off.

“Wait.” Kallen spun her Knightmare, testing the reaction speed of her land spinners as she jumped out of the way of a grasping spectre. Slower than anticipated, although not surprising with the mud still clinging. In a Knightmare— in the Guren— there wasn’t a hint of danger posed to her in the battlefield, it seemed. “He’s coming out here? What’s a prince doing coming out here for?”

“No mission briefing?” Gino questioned her a moment before he backtracked, “Right, you wouldn’t have the time. Uh. You’ve signed the NDA already, right?”

“Of course I have.” Kallen gritted out, stomping out several figures as they attempted the climb the leg of her Knightmare. “I wasn’t even allowed on base until I did. I wasn’t allowed on the transport .”

She didn't have a problem with it back then, having seen that she was assigned to the Black Knights. Of course she’d have to sign a non-disclosure, she thought, especially seeing as Zero’s identity wasn’t a commonly known one. To work with him meant that she would find out his true identity, but Kallen had been willing to swear loyalty to him out of all the members of the royal family just based on his past success record alone, not to mention he actively recruited men and women from the Areas to fight for him, valuing skill over blood.

She signed, and then eagerly read through the information given to her… only to realize it wasn’t much information at all. A name, basic information that included a birthday to tell her he was actually her age, and his place in the imperial family lineage. Zero’s earth affinity was already well-known, seeing as a good portion of his strategies before the Blight included upsetting the ground beneath his enemies.

As the Storm gathered above them and the spectres swirled in the air, the creatures crawling out of the mud were starting to become bigger and sturdier than before, almost fully formed rather than just limbs clambering on something too thin and rickety to be a body. Now, the creatures were becoming more tangible, some taking on various insect-like forms, and others flapping the beginnings of wings on their backs, made not of mud but of swirling shadows.

“Well, it’s— did you never question what we were doing out here?”

“Knights don’t question their sovereigns.” Kallen gritted out, the lines drilled through her head after too many acts of insubordination in the academy.

This seemed to throw Gino off a moment, although he continued his ever-graceful fight. “Wait, really? Is that what—? Oh boy. You’re in for a surprise, then. I mean. Yeah, definitely, you’re never to question what Prince Lelouch says in front of others, but he actually wants to know if you have something to say, you know. Most of the royal family do, that is. Ahh, well. You’ll find out soon enough. If you didn’t question it this time, I’ll let that be a surprise for you. Your three o’clock!”

Kallen swiped her right arm out blindly, feeling the give of a strangely grotesque and elongated creature dissolve under the surge of energy emitted by her Knightmare arm.

“...Thanks.” she said, begrudgingly.

“Don’t mention it— no, wait, do! About that training session I spoke of earlier…”

“Incoming.” Kallen interrupted him, watching as a much larger dot on her projected map zoomed in close.

“Crap, out of time. Kozuki! It should up up forty-five degrees, to your ten o’clock in your cockpit. Big blue button under clear class. You see it?”

Kallen looked up, frowning a moment until she saw what Gino was talking about, a blue button about the size of a ping-pong ball under clear class that she flipped up. “Roger.”

The halt in their movements meant that the creatures were once again swarming, smaller ones climbing up their legs alarmingly, and larger ones congealing together to form blobs of something that wasn’t quite finished yet.

“Count of three, push it. One, two, three—”

Kallen pushed at the button, and felt the Guren jerk as it emitted— a wave of energy, from what she could see, something echoed from Gino’s Knightmare, and then suddenly it was as if all the spectres had their strings cut, collapsing back into the mud like broken puppets, shrieking a long moment before it was entirely silent outside.

“That should do it.” Gino said, “now’s our time to get out of here.”

“But what about—?”

The dot on the map was right above them now, and Kallen braced herself and looked up to be greeted with the shadow of a large humanoid form, one she thought they’d have to fight for a brief moment before she registered the metal and shine of a Knightmare frame. It landed on the ground in front of them, the size twice that of normal KMFs, and Kallen boggled for a moment as the hatch behind opened, and Prince Lelouch stood from the cockpit, stepping out gracefully onto the shoulder of the Knightmare, followed by the green-haired woman Kallen had seen before in the room with him, her steps nimble despite her heels.

It didn’t make sense. Despite members of the royal family being unaffected by the Blight, it didn’t mean that the creatures that formed from it couldn’t easily kill them. And the death of their prince or princess meant that the armies following them would be defenseless.

Suddenly, Kallen was furious. This was worse than she imagined, hoping for a commander that would fight alongside her in a battlefield. This was a blatant disregard of his own personal safety— there was a huge difference between fighting in a Knightmare, one as large as the one he arrived in being one she imagined to suit a member of the royal family, and to expose himself intentionally to the enemy by leaving the safety of the Knightmare.

“Good job, Gino. Kallen.” Lelouch told them, his voice quiet as it was filtered in from outside, and the woman next to him said nothing at all, but rather eyed the entire area with distaste. “Make your way to the rendezvous and Rakshata will go over diagnostics with you. Gino, you know what to do.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” With that, the Tristen seemed to bow in a fashion and herded over to the Guren, speaking to her. “C’mon, Kozuki. Top speed now. We aren’t even supposed to be here when His Highness arrives.”

She had too many questions still, and it went against everything she knew to leave the prince behind in the battlefield, with the protection of his Knightmare or not.

It didn’t matter, though, as Gino grasped onto the Guren and dragged her along, the gears on the Tristen whirring ominously loud with the added weight.

“We’re just leaving him here?” Kallen demanded of Gino. “And what the hell was that button earlier?”

“Yes, and a kind of Blight-based Gefjun Disturber EMP recently developed. You’ll hear more about it later, but it only gives a few minutes, and takes enough out of our energy fillers that we won’t be able to use it again without recharging. Move , Kozuki. It wasn’t a suggestion.”

He sounded far more professional now, enough to get Kallen to reluctantly follow along, pushing the limits on her land spinners just to follow him, although she turned her head back more than once as if she could see beyond the metal of her cockpit to where the prince and the green-haired woman was standing, still outside the protection of their Knightmare frame.

“We’re not seriously leaving him,” Kallen protested in disbelief, even as the distance between them grew. “We’re Knights of Honor!”

That must be what Gino was as well, now that she was given enough time to watch him fight. With a machine like the Tristen, it wouldn’t be given to just any old foot soldier in the field. With transformative abilities like that, it was on par with the Knightmares built for the royals themselves. “You just said to question him!”

“Not when he’s busy ,” Gino insisted, and then pushed the speed up a notch. “The Disturbers will only last so long— so haul ass, Kozuki. We need to get beyond the barriers before he starts. If you’ve got the energy for questions, then you’ve got the energy to pilot faster .”

They zoomed past the land, past the crumbling walls of what was once a town and back through the forests that separated this place and their base. There was an outcrop on a man-made hill where she spotted more than a dozen Sutherlands waiting, one sporting orange-gold embellishments, and another painted a more stealthy black.

The two of them joined the rest of the Knightmares, and Kallen turned on the common frequency to hear the chatter around them.

“You’re late,” a young, unimpressed male voice told them. “We wouldn’t have gone back for you if you were caught inside the barrier.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Gino’s voice waved the complaint away easily. “We’re here now! No harm, no foul.”

There was a click, and she could hear him on the direct line to her.

“We’re staying for the show. Turn your frequency to 0802. Maybe you’ll get a few of those questions answered.”

Kallen frowned, and then turned her screen to fiddle with the controls, drawing back only slightly as the entirety of her view screen was filled with light. “What is this?”

“Drone view.” Gino told her cheerfully. “Far enough away that it should be unaffected by anything we do. We go over battle footage most of the time, to see where we can improve. Cooperation is key in the Black Knights! Or at least I think it is. It sounds like a good line, anyway.”

She didn’t bother answering him, as the others hushed him and the light grew to a more acceptable level. The drone camera, it seemed, was zoomed in on the Knightmare that the prince arrived in, and she could see that he was still standing on its shoulder rather than inside the safety of the cockpit, although by now the woman with him was sitting on the other side of the Knightmare’s head, looking rather bored.

Whatever Disturber had been fired before, the effects were clearly wearing off, as the dark and shadowy spectres were on the move again, circling faster and faster to look for a host to control. Anything it could move, she knew, which made things like dirt and water an easy target when there were a lack of fauna in the area. It meant that Zero’s usual tricks with earth would do nothing against the spectres.

It meant that the royal family’s usual elemental tricks, outside of fire, would do nothing at all.

Prince Lelouch stared up at the skies with a frown on his face, hair swirling around his face as the winds picked up once more. Kallen watched as he raised his arms up, and—

Everything changed.

—

 

Kallen Stadtfeld’s life changed when she was ten years old. Before, she had a childhood like any other, focusing on grades and impressing her parents— her mother in particular, since her father tended to be gone for months at a time, and following along behind her brother as he hung out with his friends. She lived in a modest home and had a modest amount of friends, and the only thing unusual was that she got exceptional grades and worked hard to be stronger than the other children. She was interested more in fighting and in bugs than she was in dresses and dolls. Kallen liked to wear her hair short, and preferred shorts and t-shirts like the ones that her brother Naoto had outgrown. Her mother used to sigh over her skinned knees but smile anyway.

And then in the summer of her tenth year, her father came home one day with a frown and told her that they would be moving. That she and her brother would have new names. Kallen would now be ‘Karen’, and Naoto was now ‘Nathan’. They would have to hide their mother and their heritage, and he was back to remarry to a woman who promised she wouldn’t reveal information on his previous wife and children.

Kallen managed to be furious over all of that for precisely two weeks before the first bombs were dropped in Japan. Less than a month after that, Japan surrendered its name, heritage, and nationality to be re-Christened as as nameless Area of Britannia, the eleventh since Emperor Charles took the throne.

Area 11 was only one in a long series of countries to fall to the might of Britannia and its wave of new Knightmares, technology only available to those who swore loyalty to the royal family.

Little tomboy Kallen Stadtfeld became the polite, demure little girl dressed in lace and silks known as Karen Stadtfeld, learning to curtsy and smile at her conquerors. She learned quickly to use makeup to hide any traces of her Japanese heritage, shifting focus to her blue eyes and red hair, a color combination so very Britannian that it meant no one would question the arch of her brow and the shape of her cheek.

“We got lucky,” she remembered her father once say to them, hugging both his children close to him even as they raged, “You both look… We can get away with it. We’ll be okay.”

Kallen remembered feeling like her whole world was crashing down around her, the very foundations breaking apart. She didn’t dare to look at her mother then, and she regretted it now. If her world had been falling apart by the change, then what had her mother felt?

Seeing the battlefield now in front of her, seven years later and newly sworn to a Britannian prince she barely knew, she felt a little like she was seeing a physical manifestation of how she felt that day.

The world was falling apart in front of her.

“I’ll never get used to it,” an unknown voice breathed through the communicators in quiet reverence.

On the screen, Prince Lelouch had his arms raised toward the sky, and the spectres of the Storm swirled around him, not close enough to be a danger, but very obviously revolving around him in a wave that looked faster and faster, more and more frantic as they tried to escape the hurricane but couldn’t. She couldn’t hear anything, but could imagine the sounds anyway, familiar with the shrieking of the Blight Spectres.

The woman with him was still sitting on the Knightmare’s shoulder, looking as calm as ever despite her long green hair whipping around her. She had a hand on the Knightmare’s head, perhaps to balance herself, and looked stable on her perch despite the high winds.

Prince Lelouch was moving, his arms lowering just slightly before gesturing to a side, head raised toward the skies although she couldn’t see his face.

“Wish we could hear,” another voice grumbled over the comms, and it was shushed quickly by others.

“If you could, you’d be dead.”

“The perimeter fences?” The voice from before, the one who spoke for Team Orange, asked.

“First layer holding steady. Second and third layers ready.” The voice was the young and unimpressed one, and Kallen spared a thought to wonder just how old he was. He sounded so much younger than her. “No problems so far.”

Kallen had the presence of mind to shut off her general communications, switching to a more private channel to ask Gino instead, “What’s going on?”

On the screen, the skies were swirling, dark clouds moving faster than before and pushing downward, and she could see the drone lowering as well to keep in visual range. The mud on the ground was moving, and the trees bowing to the winds. It was as it the world was being swept up in a whirlwind surrounding the prince.

Gino’s face appeared in a small box at the corner of the screen, and he looked rather— while not unimpressed, he looked as if this was a scene he saw on a regular basis. Just another everyday occurrence.

“Don’t you know?” He asked her. “His Highness is a Liedmeister .”

“Of course I know,” she snapped back, watching the events with wide eyes. Zero was well known for his control over the earth, although the power was mostly small and concentrated. He was precise with it, striking in manners that was devastating despite the limits of his abilities. Even what little he could do meant that he was a prime candidate for the Britannian throne, a contender amongst the royal children, with only a handful who inherited the Elemental Songs.

“This isn’t…” She studied Zero, fascinated enough with the masked Prince’s movements and maneuvers to have looked up information. She watched videos of his previous battles. “This isn’t the the Song of the Earth.”

Not with the way the skies were reacting on her screen, but it couldn’t be the Song of Wind, either, not with the way the earth was responding. It couldn’t even be— both, not that she ever heard of such a thing, but from what she could see, everything around the prince seemed to be turning dark and settling now, crumbling and turning to ashes. Even the spectres, shadows though they were, were dissolving .

It felt impossible. Blight spectres could only ever be lured away, be halted, unless someone managed to trap them and set the entire place on fire. Fire was the one element they couldn’t wield, meaning that Princess Cornelia soon became the main force against the Blight.

On the screen, the prince was lowering his arms now, and the winds were starting to die down. She manage to catch a glimpse of his expression for just a moment, and… he didn’t look triumphant, or happy. Instead, he was flushed and frowning.

“It’s not Earth,” Gino confirmed for her.

When the winds died down, there was absolutely nothing left besides the Prince, the woman he brought along, and the Knightmare that carried them there. All around them, the remains of crumbling buildings were gone. Trees were gone. Rocks were gone. It was nothing but a crater, and even the spectres in the clouds were gone, leaving nothing but ashen, cloudless skies.

“It’s the Song of Destruction.”