01

Tokyo Settlement, Duchy of Kanto, Area 11 (Japan), Britannian Empire

September 13, 2017

It took a while for Lieutenant Colonel Kyoshiro Tohdoh to realize it, but dawn had finally come. It was symbolized by the sun's great light peaking over the horizon, cancelling out the darkness that had been present for the last couple of hours. And with that light, Tohdoh decided, came the promise of victory. A long and well overdue victory.

Picking up speed, he weaved his advanced seventh generation knightmare frame Gekka through the various debris that now littered the Tokyo Settlement, cutting in half a Britannian Sutherland with a thruster assisted slash as he past. Another Sutherland attempted to avenge its partner with a machine gun barrage, but Tohdoh simply launched the slash harken in his seidotou's hilt, which smashed into the Sutherland's head and forced the pilot to eject. Whipping the seidotou about, Tohdoh set his radio to broadband. "All units continue advancing! Once we seize the government bureau, victory will be ours!"

The united reply from the remaining number of Black Knight units soon filled his ears. Despite the heavy losses, they still numbered over four hundred.

Even amidst the destruction, Tohdoh couldn't help but smile at the Order of the Black Knights' fortune. Yes, Zero was gone, disappearing from the battle and taking with him the advanced prototype knightmare Gawain, but he had not left without making sure that the Black Knights were within victory's reach. Most of the Britannian forces had been neutralized. Its air force had been wiped away by a single burst of the Gawain's hadron cannons, and though its army was still fighting but with numbers dwindling by the second. Vicereine Cornelia li Britannia herself was missing in action, with command being past down to her knight of honor, Sir Gilbert Guilford, a competent commander as well as one of the very few people that could match Tohdoh in a knightmare frame, but even he was firmly outmatched. And to top it all off, reinforcements from the Britannian mainland would not be able to arrive for days.

But Tohdoh wasn't a man that would claim victory before the battle was won. Only fools, like several of his late comrades from the now defunct Japan Liberation Front, believed battles to be won before the final strike was made. The trick now was to see this through to the end without the Britannians regaining the upper hand. It was harder than it sounded, but still quite possible.

Putting more power into his Gekka's landspinners, Tohdoh charged up one of the building remains, using it as a ramp, then leaping off and landing in the middle of a Britannian formation. Activating his seidotou's thrusters, he spun around one hundred and eighty degrees, slicing at least four Sutherlands down the middle, then raised his unit's left arm and fired the mounted handgun at the enemies that he had not cut. The enemy units were quick to scatter, and the ones with assault rifles returned fire even faster, but by that point Tohdoh had put the landspinners in full reverse and zig-zagged to dodge the bullets. When one of the enemy frames launched a grenade, he was forced to leap back to avoid the explosion.

But the retreat didn't last long, as Tohdoh turned around and charged, targeting the Glasgow that had launched the grenade. The fourth generation frame tried to back away, but Tohdoh Gekka was much faster, and a diagonal cut later and the Glasgow was out of the fight. Tohdoh didn't see the explosion, but he did hear it, and even through the confines of his cockpit it was loud. Even so, it didn't faze him, and he continued on to dispatch three more Sutherlands, cutting one in half at the waist, splitting another down through the middle and then impaling the last one through cockpit. He ignored the sight of blood sprayed across his seidotou when he withdrew it, and moved away to find other targets.

His next attacker actually managed to make him, a rather humorless man, laugh out loud. It was a Knight Police, one of the Glasgows that had been stripped of its military applications and turned over to regular law enforcement. And to make it all the more amusing, it was facing him down with nothing but a pistol and a riot shield, both effective against rioting mobs but entirely useless against other knightmare frames.

"Have the Britannians gotten so desperate that they're bringing regular police frames into battle?" Tohdoh wondered out loud. He drew a cold smirk at that. "Very well, I shall grant you a mercy killing."

And with that he charged at the Knight Police, making minimal effort dodge its fire. Instead of cutting it in half straight away like he had been doing with the regular military knightmares, he banked to the side and encircled the law enforcement unit, which also attempted to turn around to keep the Black Knight frame in its sights, but again, the Gekka was much faster than the antiquated machine. Quick as always, Tohdoh cut the riot shield in half, forcing the Knight Police to throw away the pieces. He then made two stabs into the Knight Police's legs, forcing the knightmare to kneel like a human would with such wounds, and finished it off by beheading it. The cockpit soon ejected without harm.

"You call that a mercy killing, Colonel?" Tohdoh heard from his side. He turned to see another Gekka, specifically the unit belonging to Kotetsu Urabe, speed up to meet him, with a few Burais not far behind. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you've become a bit of a sadist."

"Urabe, what are you doing here? I sent you to take care of Sector Kappa Seven," Tohdoh exclaimed, not happy to see one of his men abandoning his post to come see him. They were in the middle of a battle after all.

Urabe just laughed. "We took care of that sector a long time ago. I felt my talents were needed elsewhere, so I took a force and left Mori in command of the rest."

"I hope for their sakes that Gilbert doesn't choose that area to stage a counterattack," Tohdoh stated, which sounded more like a warning to Urabe than anything else. As if on cue, his radar beeped suddenly, signaling an incoming wave of enemy knightmares. "Nevermind. Move in, Tsunami Formation."

"Will do Colonel." Urabe signed off, immediately putting his own Gekka into a charge, followed by the Burais.

Tohdoh did the same, although with the customizations that had been made to his unit, his Gekka actually managed to outrun the other knightmares and came into contact with the enemies first. Among the Sutherlands and Glasgows were more Knight Police, but instead of the amusement he felt earlier, Tohdoh felt pity. The Britannians really had become desperate; he would have felt sorry for them, had they not tormented and exploited the Japanese for as long as they had.

However, as the Japanese offensive grew in strength, the Britannian counteroffensive became all the more fierce. The enemy knightmares started to group together more, making it far more difficult to engage them individually, while the ones that broke from the formation did so at heightened speed. Just as he had dispatched another Glasgow, Tohdoh saw from the corner of his eye one such Sutherland charge out with a heavy lance in hand, aimed directly at him. It was only by his fast reflexes that he was able to move the Gekka out of the way before being impaled; a nearby Burai wasn't so lucky. Tohdoh cursed at the death of a comrade and sprayed the Sutherland with a burst from his arm cannon. He managed to blow off the Sutherland's arm before one of the Knight Police moved in and used its riot shield to deflect the shots.

"Chaos Mine!" someone blared out over the radio. Sure enough, Tohdoh caught sight of the weapon flying through the air, coming up to his general vicinity. With no time to give the order to dodge, he made the Gekka reverse and move out of range just as the chaos mine opened up and rained flechettes upon where he had been standing. At least four Burais had been caught in the fire, and only one cockpit block managed to eject.