The Federation political office sat on the outskirts of a coastal administrative city, a low complex of reinforced buildings that had never been designed to survive a mobile suit assault — because until this week, nobody had seriously believed it would need to.
Gato brought his force down in a wide pincer, five Gelgoogs at the point and twelve Zaku IIs fanned out behind them, and from the moment the first shots crossed the perimeter fence it was clear this was not going to be a contest.
"Federation garrison confirmed at six units," Ridden reported over the tactical channel, voice flat with the particular disinterest of a man reading numbers he already knew wouldn't matter. "Four standard GM, two GM Command variants. That's the entirety of local defense."
"Six against seventeen." Gato didn't slow his approach. "Take the perimeter. Leave the building intact until we've secured the officials inside."
It went the way six-against-seventeen usually went. The GM Command units tried to organize a fighting withdrawal toward the building's central bunker, buying time for the officials inside to do — what, exactly, none of them seemed entirely sure, since there was nowhere left on this stretch of coastline to actually evacuate to. Within minutes, three of the six were down, and the ranking officer's voice crackled over an open channel, strained and already resigned.
"This is Federation garrison command. We're requesting terms. Repeat, we are requesting—"
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
"Multiple contacts, inbound from the southeast!" one of Gato's Zaku pilots called out, and the tactical display lit up with ten new signatures cutting fast and low across the treeline — sleek, unfamiliar silhouettes that belonged to no Federation production line Gato recognized.
"Shinomiya Corporation reinforcement, designation Flag Squadron," came the transmission, crisp and unbothered by the chaos already unfolding beneath them. "Federation garrison, hold your position. We're taking the perimeter."
The Union Flags came in already firing, linear rifles chattering out precise bursts that forced two of Gato's Zakus to break formation, and at close range they didn't hesitate to switch to their sonic blades — vibro-edged weapons that hummed audibly even over the open channel, biting cleanly through Zaku armor that had never been designed to stop them.
Gato assessed the new arrivals in the space of a single breath. Ten Flags, disciplined, well-drilled, clearly not improvising the way the Federation garrison had been. Not an enemy to underestimate. Also, critically, not the objective.
"Seven Zakus, peel off and hold the Flags at the treeline," he ordered. "Everyone else, stay on task. We are not here to fight Shinomiya today. We're here for the building."
Seven Zaku IIs broke away to meet the Union Flags head-on, buying exactly the kind of grinding, inconclusive engagement Gato needed — enough resistance to keep the Flags occupied without committing enough force to actually win it outright. It would cost him pilots. It always did. But it would cost him fewer than trying to fight both battles at once.
Behind that screen, the remaining Gelgoogs and Zakus finished what they'd come to do. The last of the GM Command units went down defending a doorway it could never actually have held, and by the time the dust from that exchange settled, Gato's forces had the compound, the surviving officials inside it, and — more importantly, from Lelouch's perspective — a message that would reach every remaining Federation office on the continent within the hour: that the Shinomiya reinforcements, however capable, were not always going to be enough, and were not always going to arrive before it mattered.
The withdrawal, when it came, was orderly. Gato left the building standing, as instructed, and took what — and who — he'd actually come for.
Shinomiya Compound
Kaguya found Sei Iori exactly where she expected to find him — buried in a workbench cluttered with half-assembled frame components, the low blue glow of a diagnostic display throwing shadows across a face that hadn't slept properly in longer than either of them wanted to discuss.
"The beam weapon output on the current Flag line," she said, setting a data slate down beside him without preamble. "I need it improved. The linear rifles are good, but good isn't going to be enough forever, and I'd rather solve that problem before the next report tells me it already was one."
Sei looked up from his work, blinking like he was surfacing from somewhere much deeper than the workbench. "I can look at the output curves, sure. But—" He hesitated, the way he always did right before saying something he wasn't fully sure he should. "Honestly? Might be worth thinking about a different frame entirely. A new model line, not just an upgrade path on the Flag."
Kaguya went very still.
"We haven't even finished stabilizing Union Flag production after three months," she said, slowly, like she was checking she'd actually heard him correctly. "And you want to start on an entirely new model."
"...When you put it like that, it sounds worse than I meant it."
It did sound worse. Sei felt the familiar, useless urge to explain properly — to say that where he came from, a new model wasn't a three-month industrial undertaking involving a war and a private army's entire production capacity, it was a kit you built on a weekend table with a hobby knife and too much patience, that he'd built more "new models" before he turned fifteen than this world's entire industrial base would produce in a decade, and that some instinct he still didn't fully understand let him build the real thing the same way he used to build the plastic one. There was no version of that sentence that didn't sound insane, or worse, like exactly the kind of thing that got a person quietly reassigned to Augusta's research wing to be studied rather than employed.
So he didn't say any of it.
"Just an early idea," he said instead. "Wasn't meant to be a today problem."
Kaguya studied him a moment longer — the particular, searching look she gave anyone she suspected of not telling her the whole truth, which was most people, most of the time — and then apparently decided it wasn't a fight worth having tonight.
"Focus on the Flag line," she said. "Beam output, mobility, whatever margin you can find in the current frame. We push what we have until it's genuinely maxed out, not just until you get bored of it." A faint, tired almost-smile took some of the edge off the order. "When there's an actual technological breakthrough worth building around — something real, not a hunch — that's when I want your creativity pointed at something new. Not before."
"...Fair," Sei admitted, and meant it more than he expected to.
She left him to his diagnostics after that, and he sat alone for a while longer in the workshop's blue light, turning a component over in his hands, wondering — not for the first time, and probably not for the last — exactly how long he could keep being useful to this world without ever being able to explain what he actually was.