Titan Fafnir.
The evil dragon of the Eastern Front. Grand Duke Dyke’s nightmare.
“Fafniiiir!!!”
And Baron Zeke’s archenemy.
The thrusters on Zeke’s Balmung spewed fire like mad. Fafnir’s feet dragged along the floor as it was shoved backward. Even when it drove its tail into the ground and drew out more output to hold its ground, it was no use.
This was not a simple contest of thruster output. To begin with, Zeke’s Balmung was four meters larger than the Titan. This was a contest of mass, pressing down from above.
The armor on Balmung’s forearm opened, and a blade rose out. The blade heated red-hot in an instant and stabbed forward, but Fafnir’s hand clamped down on Balmung’s forearm and stopped it.
With a screeching scrape, scars were carved into Balmung’s forearm armor. Fafnir’s hands were like razor-sharp claws. Even by themselves, they were enough to make it an evil dragon.
“Elbow Rocket!”
Zeke pulled the stick slightly and pressed a switch. Balmung’s elbow opened, revealing a thruster that ignited. In an instant, the blade drew closer, and Fafnir’s armor slowly began to melt.
At the same time, Fafnir turned its head.
The maw on its head split wide open, and the muzzle of its charged particle cannon began to glow red.
“Has the cooling time gotten shorter than before?”
Advancement in technology was not limited to the Empire.
No, this was the Alliance, seeking to bring down the Empire that stood at the cutting edge of technology. That was why they tried all the harder, in countless ways, and with even more persistence, to catch up to the Empire’s technological strength.
The moment the charged particle cannon poured out its light, Balmung twisted its body. At the same time as a reverse thrust, its side thrusters ignited briefly, moving as though in defiance of the laws of physics.
As for the gravitational acceleration pressing down on his body, he endured it by gritting his teeth.
The moment the Heat Hidden Sword retracted, Balmung drew its greatsword. The two Titans, now separated, stared each other down.
The machine gun attached to Balmung’s pelvic skirt and the machine gun mounted on Fafnir’s chest spewed bullets at the same time.
As their armor was hammered by one another’s fire, the two Titans charged simultaneously. The moment Balmung planted its foot on the floor, it locked itself in place with its grounding anchor and raised the flat of its blade.
Craack!
Fafnir spun and slammed its tail into the flat of the sword. Even without an edge, it was threatening through sheer mass and force. It had enough power that even a heavily armored Titan could see its pilot killed inside if the core took a direct hit.
Both Titans ignited every thruster across their bodies at once. Balmung tried to close the distance, while Fafnir rapidly spun again in midair.
The blade on the tail struck home, smashing one of Balmung’s skirt machine guns. The instant Balmung swung its greatsword, Fafnir spun in the opposite direction this time and evaded it.
It had begun. The acceleration.
The thrusters mounted all over Fafnir’s body repeatedly ignited and cut off. Acceleration was added to the tail, endlessly increasing its destructive power.
And not only the tail.
Claws, wings, every means across its body that could become a weapon began to pressure Balmung from all sides. These were attacks that used speed as a weapon, impossible to suppress with output or mass.
The greatsword began to be shaved away.
Even for a heavily armored Titan, its armor was not eternal. Scratches would continue to remain, and those scratches could become cracks. And if so, those cracks could become collapse.
Klang!
The instant Fafnir struck the greatsword with its tail, Balmung’s greatsword broke in half. At the same time, Balmung’s main sensor moved along the tail blade.
He had to block it. If it hit the core, he would die.
The instant he raised both arms to shield the core, the tail struck down across Balmung’s arms.
With a boom, Balmung was sent flying. He ignited the thrusters belatedly, but the massive body bounced once off the ground. He managed to regain balance afterward, but nausea and dizziness surged over him at the same time.
Zeke clenched his teeth hard.
Through his blurred, spinning vision, Fafnir came charging in.
With thrusters powerful enough for flight propulsion and the mass of a Titan added to them, it had transformed into an enormous kinetic weapon.
The instant Fafnir’s body slammed into Balmung, the two arms shielding the core were knocked away. At the same time, Fafnir’s tail coiled around Balmung’s body.
Perhaps the outcome had been decided from the moment he allowed Fafnir’s offensive. Since he had failed to counterattack, perhaps it was only natural that he would lose.
When he drew the Hidden Swords, Fafnir seized Balmung’s arms tight. Its tail gripped his waist and legs as well. Even with the thrusters firing, there was no escaping.
The head opened, spreading its maw wide. It glowed red-hot. The charged particle cannon. Zeke took his hands off the sticks and pressed the code input device.
Just before he entered the self-destruct code, something lit up.
A communication signal.
No voice came through. It was definitely short-range communication, but it was not a signal from Fafnir either.
Even so, he could clearly sense that something was approaching.
A sleek, pitch-black Titan flew in. It leaped. Clenching its left fist tight, it struck Fafnir’s head.
Boom!
With a sound like a bombardment, a stake pierced through the maw.
Fafnir hurriedly reverse-thrusted and retreated. At the same time, the stake exploded. The evil dragon, having lost its head, dropped fragments from its mouth in a shower.
The pitch-black Titan turned its head toward Zeke, then loaded a second stake into its pile bunker.
“A-Are you all right?”
Ailey readjusted the rifle in her right hand. Icarus, which had followed after her, held battle-axes in both hands.
“Deep, Ailey. Aron, Icarus. Joining the battle.”
The tension slowly drained from Zeke’s clenched mouth.
This was a battlefield, but he was no longer a soldier.
“I will assign penalty points for disobeying orders.”
“If we successfully complete the operation, do they turn into bonus points?”
“That is an unnecessary question.”
They were like fools.
Like simpletons.
Watching his students charge into danger of their own accord, he once again found himself thinking they were admirable, and spoke.
“There will be no bonus points. I will merely waive the penalty points.”
***
Saving people.
Was it something I wanted to do, or something I had to do?
If I said I wanted to do what I had to do, would that be strange?
Professor Zeke did not add anything like a strategy, nor did he demand anything from us.
He drew the Hidden Swords from both forearms and heated them red. Then he ignited his thrusters and accelerated toward Fafnir.
There was only one move. Attack.
Then we would act accordingly.
Icarus accelerated to Fafnir’s left. At the same time, I accelerated straight to the right. The moment I fired the rifle, Fafnir spread its wings and blocked the barrage.
“As you can see, the wings actually have thicker armor. The body is what’s easier to damage.”
Professor Zeke was right.
In the end, the essence of the name evil dragon was a Titan created by human hands.
There was no such thing as a perfect Titan in this world, and even a Titan that flew through the sky could be brought down.
“I’ll hold it back!”
Skreeech!
Icarus struck the wing with two battle-axes. At the same time, thrusters ignited all across Fafnir’s body.
“What the—how many thrusters does that thing have?”
It looked as if thrusters were mounted on every wing joint, every part of its body. Either that, or a generator was directly connected to the wings.
Even though it was merely turning on its thrusters and pushing with its wings, the sight of Icarus, larger than Fafnir, staggering was frightening.
But.
Both wings that served as its main armor had stopped. One was blocking Icarus’s battle-axes, and the other was blocking my barrage.
There was nothing to stop Balmung.
Balmung ignited its thrusters while hovering. Long streams of flame blasted out violently. At the same time, Fafnir’s tail suddenly shot out from behind its back.
“P-Professor Zeke!”
He could never dodge it.
Not by common sense.
“I can see it.”
Balmung stopped hovering and landed on the ground. Its sliding body lowered as though clinging to the floor, evading the tail, then shoved it aside with its shoulder and closed in instantly.
It looked not like the movement of a Titan, but clearly like the movement of a human being.
“Seriously, no matter how many times I see it, that sync makes no sense.”
Sync?
“What is sync?”
“When the pilot’s and Titan’s reaction speeds match. When the onboard artificial intelligence makes the same judgment as the pilot at the same time, and the two align to achieve perfect movement. All of that together is just called sync.”
Machine gun fire hammered against Balmung’s shoulder armor. There was no reason armor as tough as the core armor would be pierced by a machine gun.
The instant Balmung tried to stab the Hidden Sword toward the machine gun, Fafnir fixed its feet to the ground and ignited its reverse thrusters.
It was impossible to push Balmung itself away, but the thruster output was more than enough to push away a single arm.
“Elbow Rocket.”
Thrusters ignited.
They pierced through that physical force. The Hidden Sword penetrated the machine gun’s barrel.
Fafnir released the anchors fixed to the ground. The force of its reverse thrusters pushed Fafnir’s body back as it was. Its wings spread, and Icarus was flung backward.
At the same time, Fafnir turned its head to the right.
“That’s not where I am!”
The left.
Beneath the spread wing, compressing that small frame as much as possible, as if lying flat.
With the thought that if Professor Zeke, if Balmung, could do it, then so could I. A maneuver that a heavily armored type should absolutely never be capable of.
As Aron said, if my sync was really that exceptional, there was no way I couldn’t pull it off.
There was no way Ailey and I wouldn’t sync.
“Crazy bastard.”
Listening to Aron grind the words out, I thrust out my left arm.
Boom!
The pile bunker pierced through the wing and slammed in. At the same time, the wing folded and struck Ailey. I rolled across the ground, bracing against the floor with both hands as I slid.
The moment I lifted my head, the embedded stake exploded.
One of Fafnir’s wings collapsed.
Fafnir, having flinched, grabbed the opposite wing with both hands and began tearing it off with a series of cracks.
Was it to maintain balance?
Even so, did the Eastern Alliance’s Titans not even have a purge function?
Thud.
The wing fell to the ground, kicking up sand and dust.
“It’s coming.”
With a wooong, Fafnir’s main thrusters began to spew fire. The output was on a completely different level from before.
I loaded the last stake into the pile bunker, and Icarus corrected its stance. Balmung, after briefly taking position, retracted its Hidden Swords back into its forearms.
Fafnir took flight.
“Huh?”
“It’s leaving?”
In an instant, Fafnir vanished from sight. As we stood blankly for a moment before turning our heads at the same time, Balmung raised its head.
“Go clean up. Zeus and White Bunny are over there.”
Ah.
Icarus nodded, then accelerated toward Zeus. I also quickly approached White Bunny. The core hatch was crumpled, as if the tail blade had struck it at an angle.
“Please.”
I tried to grab the hatch with the thin right arm, then seized it with the heavily armored left arm instead. With a crunch, I tore the shattered hatch away in one motion.
There was someone inside.
“Ailey!”
“Biosignals—there are biosignals! I’ll send a rescue signal!”
We saved them.
I let go of the sticks and wiped my face. I could feel that I was drenched in sweat. My hands trembled for a moment, and then a breath escaped me.