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Conditions in the 'provisional capital of Free Japan' of Saga were surprisingly stable, considering how close it was to the frontline. Sawasaki's attempts to create a functioning government administration in this situation less than stellar. The defensive line around Saga however was a testament to the engineering capacity of Sawasaki's allies, and subordinates.

Early in the morning Sento's Kyushu forces had struck out through the subway. Even though the strike force's burai unit had been utterly annhilated down to the last man they had inflicted parity losses on Britannia's opposing Sutherlands. For Britannia forces it was a reeling blow, and delayed their planned morning assault long enough for Chinese elements to further bunker down and reinforce their fall back position. At the same time Sawasaki recognized in hindsight the downside to the attack.

Britannian forces while disorganized, and to an extent demoralized from yesterday stunning riposte was also now divided into three factions. Cornelia, Gottwald, and the Knight of Six. Gottwald, far to the East, and away from the front advancing a few kilometers an hour at times was not an issue. The knight of six with the Gawain on the other hand was... a problem. The division in Britannia forces should have been aparent in the way you recognize something obvious in hindsight. So Sawasaki was a bit annoyed, compounded by fatigue, with himself. At the same time...

"The 7th unit has reported in the Britannian tank unit has been destroyed, though enemy Burais are converging on their position." The eunuch commented, "Sento's elements contributed to our frontline could allow us to withdraw back to the front."
"No we should attack and press on!"
"Atsushi, now is not the time to be rash we need to hold the Britannian's at bay, if we extend to far the Black Knights will just encircle our forward elements." The eunuch responded,

Sawasaki gritted his teeth and twitched, "yes I- if we pull back the Black Knights will just fill the gaps in the line, and we need them off balance as well."

"They have been rather quiet today," The eunuch conceeded, which was worrying. Their expectations had been for a tremendous assault by the combined Britannian-Black Knights forward elements, what they'd gotten had been a series of slashing advances at around ten this morning primarily centered around Istavaanian mobile formations, and that had been all the Black Knights had done so far.

It could have been anything. Sento's attack could have forced the Black Knights to redeploy to watch the subways, but more likely they were waiting for something. That the Merlin hadn't sortied in nearly 24 hours had also been noted. Still three monster knightmares were enough to deal with as it was.

The Lancelot was still an issue, despite all Sawasaki's attempt to bait Suzaku Kurugi it seemed for naught as the Lancelot along with Todoh, and the four holy swords assisted a second set of Britannian advances to relieve pressure on one of Cornelia's flanks.

"They're scheming," Sawasaki grunted irritably. "We'll have to redeploy these units," Advance, retreat. Give up ground, and gain ground the last several hours had just been trading of ground.

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There was a dead zone between the two lines. Both sides would press attacks. One side would gain territory in one area and in another area loose ground. Overall though the Frontline was static. Pushing too far merely got units encircled and destroyed. Anti knightmare rifles in this situation, along with tank cannons were particularly lethal. The total area of the front as longer than it was wide. A width measure in mere dozens of kilometers, which gave the anti knightmare rifle, with its up to twelve kilometer lethal range, for some models, a tremendous use here. Most frontline units had been given the order early to use their missiles as quickly as possible.

Kallen hadn't had a problem, the Gurren was stuck holding back after the initial Istavaanian advance, and it was pissing her off. Rakshata was currently fixing up the Gurren. This whole waiting thing pissed her off. "I mean I get it, we're waiting for all the reinforcements to get into position but-" She growled irritably. Lelouch's Thorians, their 1st division, were moving up reinforcing critical positions and she understood that was important, but the enemy was right in front of them... and they were standing still.

Rakashata looked up from her work, but one of the Thorian officers beat her to it. "Stop complaining we'll attack when we have to. As it is there is no attack to commit to yet,"

Kallen sighed, they were waiting for last Thorian elements... the Russians to get into position. Todoh had said, before he and the four Holy swords had gone off, that this big of a massing force took time, that these forces also contained elements who still had to land would push back the assult until this afternoon.

Lelouch grimaced at the computer, from where he was working on an Edinburgh Tranche II "We'll have to scrap the entire pod," He grunted, "its fried, we're lucky its just the targeting unit and the surge didn't damage the knightmare's actual computers. Eject the gunpod." The initial push against one of the fortified positions hadn't gone well, but it had given them an idea on the capacity of those particle cannon armed frames the Chinese had deployed. He turned to Kallen, "There isn't anything to do for the Gurren yet, for this situation the Gurren is best set to be used to respond to enemy attacks, as opposed to attacking the enemy's lines."

"My child is ready to return to the field!" Rakshata declared, descending the engineering ladder from the gurren. "Though you should have some care with how you treat her."

Lelouch tapped his radio, "Rakshata if you're done with the Gurren Todoh has a question regarding the Gekkas, and he can't return to base for you to diagnose in person."
Rakshata scowled, "That man is utterly inconsiderate of their feelings. When this is done I'll have a stern talking to with that man." Lelouch sighed as she walked off with his radio.

"So how are we doing?"

Lelouch glanced at Kallen, "The total change to the frontline can be measured in meters." He exhaled. "Even when the rest of our forces commit we're going to have to have some kind of negotiations," They were just going to get bogged down, and Hammerfall was unacceptable in this situation.

"Well, so then what?"

"I don't know."

"What about... our reinforcements?"
"They're coming."

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Suzaku and Euphemia. Knight and Princess. It was for Euphemia Suzaku was piloting the Lancelot for, he was her knight. Schneziel, and Guildford had elaborated for him what that meant, and in his own way even Sawasaki had helped make what he had to do clear.

He'd picked up one of the enemies' L112 guns earlier, the people fighting them were the enemy there wasn't any choice but to kill them. He had to survive and make it back. Today though it proved that everyone... well Kyoto, and the Black Knights could work with Britannia, and Euphemia as sub viceroy, and Cornelia as Viceroy could work with them... and now that Euphemia could talk to Lelouch it'd be better for everyone.

The Burai exploded. The Vickers cannon was effective, its only true downside was its ammo, this was the third L112 he'd picked up since the battle started this morning. "Suzaku, looks like the Chinese are pulling back from here,"

Suzaku nodded, they were supposed to hold, the open ground, relatively speaking, was a killing field where both sides had heavily dug in anti armor guns in position. Even though the Lancelot's shields wouldn't be troubled by individual shots there were still a lot of enemies over the next ridge, the Sutherland Platoon didn't have the luxury of shields.

The computer blinked as it fed the latest tactical battlefield update from the command units. They lost the ninth company except for a few survivors, Cornelia was swinging around to take up the slack. Suzaku nodded to himself, Todoh and the Viceroy could definitely handle that. Not that there was anything he'd be able to do. He zoomed in via the Lancelot's onboard electronic sensor suite on the area ahead of him. The uneven landscape was filled with the remains of knightmares and armored vehicles.

It was because the Chinese, and Sawasaki had decided to invade. He reminded himself as he focused on centering the rifle on the target. A squeeze of the trigger sent the round down range. The unsuspecting Gun ru exploded, the more of them he destroyed, he reminded himself, the more other people wouldn't have to fight later. He selected another target, centered the reticle, checked the wind, and squeezed the trigger. Suzaku cursed as the rifle didn't fire, out of ammo, and tossed it angrily in the mud to the side.

The Lancelot took a step back, and began to pull back, as he pulled his other knightmare assault rifle from the harness on the Z 01's back.

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The Gawain floated over the battlefield, today one of several units utilizing the float system. Even though the Avalon was not present the Chinese had bigger problems. Clovis had ordered both of his 'Siegfrieds' into the fray. The Chinese's heavily overlapping fields of fire meant little against airborne units even though the knightmares still had to contend with the gusts of wind which buffeted them, as well as the reduced visibility.

Marianne vi Britannia, within the body, and controlling said body, of Anya Alstreim guided the upgraded Gawain. Lelouch's upgrades had largely been finished some time before two in the morning, which had given them time to test out the particle cannon blooming control before hand. The hadron cannons now created large sweeping beams of red across the field.

Of course the Chinese Gunru's had more pressing matters like the two absurdly large mobile armors... well rather what Clovis insisted calling his 'knight giga fortresses' bearing down on their position in addition to the Birminghams contributed by the Black Knights, and the Gawain itself.

Marianne drove the Gawain down using the slash harken fingers deal with a few straggler units. There was still the issue of those, now at a confirmed total of three, Chinese particle beam equipped 'mobile armors'. Well there would just be two left in just a minute, this one didn't have the back up, and hardened position the other two had, Marianne mused, the Gawain barrel rolled out of the way. The Chinese 6th generation machines seemed to have a rather severe down side in power capacitors, forcing them to rely on their conventional guns, which was the main reason both Siegfrieds were fine, that and the Siegfrieds' substantial agility.

Marianne recognized that after this she'd definitely be speaking with Charles, and well they'd need to keep an eye on Anya, as she'd never asserted control for this long before. For now though those particle cannons needed to be destroyed. She'd tagged it once with a hadron shot, leaving heavy burns and melted sections across the armor, but the mech had still been able to turn enough conventional guns towards the gawain to make it back off. Clearly they'd compensated on the capacitor issue by overlaying armor, and ablative armor, probably to deal with the heat the machine itself generated as a byproduct, for protection.

At this point it didn't matter they neededd to take it out now, before the Britannian assault began on the position. Marianne vi Britannia relayed her orders to the Britannian troops, it took a sizable effort not to bark orders to the Black Knights... though Lelouch had made it expressly clear if the Round tried anything funny to Black Knight elements a hadron blast would be cutting the Gawain in half. It was cute in the way of how it actually reminded her of a younger Charles.

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Schneziel swallowed, that word had gotten out this fast wasn't good. The most likely leak had been Euphemia, who had probably meant well. The arrival of the Thorian 1st division elements had been a welcome thing... up until the homeland had called... explaining that had been a particularly nasty business. It was nice the Russians would be landing until after one. Lelouch was still gathering target data apparently.

"Your explanation is a bit lacking." Guinnevere commented disdainfully. "Lelouch somehow was alive this entire time, raises an army, and hasn't done anything with it for the entire time he's been-"
Schneziel cleared his throat, "I would hardly say that he's done nothing,"

Oddsseus eu Britannia, seated at the head of the table, squeezed his hands together, before placing them on the table and standing up. He took a minute to compose himself before saying anything, "Father- His majesty has yet to say anything regarding all of this," There was some rumbling at this, it'd been three days, three days for an invasion that they'd been expecting... well an invasion Cornelia had been aware of ahead of time. That Charles di Britannia had been completely absent from all this was a shock to the system. His abscence forced the highest post in the land to Schneziel, and naturally certain people resented this. Oddyseus eu Britannia lacked his father's force of personality, and was now count in the middle between these people... "now, Guinevere, I'm sure Schneziel was going to continue."

Schneziel kept looking dead ahead into the camera, "This would be one of the things to talk with Cornelia about, Lelouch has built a great deal." the blonde prince stopped, except here came the problem. Diethard Reid's intrepid reporting of the battlefield situation, and in the interim between battles was uneditted, but the Chinese, and the Kyushu forces had done the same thing as well, though no doubt in a more editted form, Schneziel suspected. It didn't matter, what did matter is that the people were seeing the battle firsthand... and then there was the looming worry over Lelouch's strategic fallback initiative. Even as prime minister it'd be next to impossible to hide that in the long run from Lelouch's enemies amongst their siblings. "I can't say much,"
"Can't or won't"
"Guinnevere," Oddyseus sounded mildly scandalized by the accusation, "that is no way to treat our brother." Their sister gave him a disdainful look.

"Truthfully there is not much that can be said, yes Lelouch founded the Black Knights, and I am sure that will be important in the days to come." Schneziel stated, "we are committed to facing various ideologies in area 11, and we are also to be embroiled in a war with the EU. Lelouch is our brother, and we find ourselves still in the dawn of a new era, one that is still to be defined."

It was at that particular moment they were all taken by surprise, because it was at that particular moment by Charles di Britannia's booming voice, and a harsh comment, "Is that so boy..."

Charles di Britannia ruled half the globe, and a third of the world's population lived beneath Britannia's standard.

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